WUSAT-2 satellite successfully transmits data to the very end

Back in March we wrote about Warwick University’s WUSAT-2 satellite (see Warwick University readies WUSAT 2 cubesat mission). Well, it has successfully launched, writes Richard Wilson.

View from CubeSat

Even more impressively it continued to send data until its destruction on landing – data was transmitted and received from an ESA/Rexus launched unit on re-entry

Overseen by the European Space Agency (ESA), the satellite was launched from the Swedish Space Centre. After the successful launch the satellite was ejected and the communications system started transmitting data signals to the ground station.

“This is the first time that data has been successfully transmitted and received from an ESA/Rexus launched unit on re-entry – an amazing achievement. We have a lot of data now to be analysed, and we are hoping to estimate the speed of the satellite via the Doppler shift of the radio signals,” said Dr William Crofts, director of Warwick Satellite Programme at the University of Warwick.

Crofts added: “We are hopeful of a full orbital launch for WUSAT-3 in the future, and there is a real chance that we may even be able to deploy WUSAT-3 from the International Space Station.”

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Alun Williams

Web Editor of Electronics Weekly, he is the author of the Gadget Master, Eyes on Android and Electro-ramblings blogs and also covers space technology news. He has been working in tech journalism for worryingly close to thirty years. In a previous existence, he was a software programmer.