Small Satellite Program (United States Naval Academy)

PCSat

PCsat, short for Prototype Communication Satellite, marked the Naval Academy's debut in space operations. Launched from Kodiak, Alaska in 2001, it enabled two-way handheld communication for students and APRS users in the Amateur Satellite Service. It is the longest-surviving satellite built by midshipmen still in orbit.

Two follow-on PCSats, identical in design to the first, reached the ISS on 26 July 2005. An astronaut deployed them from an external suitcase during a spacewalk eight days later, exposing solar cells and activating the data transponder. These satellites also carried a NRL solar cell experiment and provided telemetry and command functions.

QIKCOM

QIKCom-1 is an amateur radio payload that flies on the host spacecraft SIMPL, so it lacks its own solar panels or attitude control. It continues the APRS packet radio communications missions of PCSat and PSAT, relaying remote telemetry, sensor data, and user data. The payload includes telemetry and command and control for a complete CubeSat.

QIKCom-1 arrived on the ISS but is being held from deployment due to a radio licensing issue; once released, its expected lifetime is only a couple weeks. QIKCOM-2, another USNA payload on the eXCITe mission scheduled for late 2016, adds a touch-tone uplink capability so users can use existing radios with keypads instead of specialized APRS radios. Delivered in November 2015, QIKCOM-2 is held as a hot-backup and will launch at the earliest opportunity.

HFSat

HFSat is a High Frequency Satellite Communications experiment intended to demonstrate that standard HF radios can provide backup SATCOM for units ranging from large naval warships to individual Marines. Detailed design began in late summer 2016. Initial tests will use HF satellite allocations in the Amateur Satellite services and involve amateur experiments worldwide.

Did You Know?

• Sapphire, launched in 2001 on Kodiak Star, was built by Naval Academy midshipmen in partnership with Stanford University and George Washington University and later modified to support the APRS network.
• The Atmospheric Neutral Density Experiment (ANDE) used 112 D-sized Lithium cells instead of solar panels and had no external antennas; each half of the sphere was insulated and used as a dipole antenna.
• USS Langley, a 3U Colony-1 CubeSat designed as a Linux-based file server in space, launched on the ULTRA mission in spring 2015 but communications were never established.