Students and their professors at Cornell University are hoping for smooth sailing for a project known as the Alpha CubeSat mission – but they’re looking for ham radio assistance to help them track its progress.

Their project has deployed what are known as Light Sail ChipSats, small free-flying flight computers in low Earth orbit, to transmit telemetry on 437.4 MHz at 100 mW of power using LoRa transceivers. The ChipSats are mounted on a retro reflective laser sail. The project, which relies only on solar power, was sent to the International Space Station aboard 1U CubeSats developed by students at the school’s Space Systems Design Studio.

The project website explains the short time window saying [quote] “Between the sunlight-only, low power and short orbital lifetime, we need all the help we can get to collect telemetry from the sail and establish LEO-to-ground communications for this new generation of tiny spacecraft.” [Endquote]

For details on how to participate, follow the link in the text version of this week’s Newsline report at arnewsline.org. You can also contact Joshua KD2WTQ at the email address jsu4@cornell.edu