Contribute

UPSat is designed and built as an open source project. Below you can find some contribution opportunities:

Telemetry Acquisition

UPsat COMMS subsystem will be active 30 minutes after deployment from ISS. Downlink frequency is coordinated as 435.765 Mhz.

When not in command and control mode the transceiver sends a beacon every 30 seconds. There are three different types of beacons sent:

• A CW beacon
  • OOK modulation, at 20 wpm
  • 13 characters sent, format can be found here.
• A Whole Orbit Data (WOD) beacon
  • GFSK9600 modulation
  • Encoding is following the QB50 WOD specification, that can be found here.
  • Sample decoder on the SatNOGS DB is here.
• An Extended WOD beacon
  • GFSK9600 modulation, AX.25 G3RUH packed
  • Encoding and value descriptions can be found here.

The sequence of the different beacons is configurable from the ground segment and the default configuration is the following (in 30” intervals)

1. CW Beacon
2. EX_WOD
3. EX_WOD
4. WOD
5. EX_WOD
6. EX_WOD
7. EX_WOD
8. WOD

Want to help? Setup a SatNOGS groundstation to help with telemetry acquisition for UPSat and many more satellites out there!

Software Development

Are you code-savy? How is your C? Visit one of our many repositories in Gitlab and get involved! We keep our issues updated for many contribution opportunities. Now that UPSat is delivered, be sure to checkout other Libre Space Foundation initiatives.

Outreach

Get the word out for the first open source satellite! Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and make sure to share the posts and updates around the project.