Ultrasmall Japanese Satellites to Be Launched From India

Tokyo, Aug. 13 (Jiji Press)–Two ultrasmall satellites made by Japanese university students are scheduled to be launched from India this autumn.

One of the satellites, called Cute-1.7+APD and made by a team of Tokyo Institute of Technology students, is a three-dimensional rectangular object measuring 20 centimeters by 15 centimeters by 10 centimeters.

The other, called Seeds, was made by a Nihon University team. It is a 10-centimeter cube and weighs one kilogram.

They are slated to launched by India’s PSLV-C9 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on the southeastern Indian island of Sriharikota in September or October, together with satellites made by university students in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark under the so-called CubeSat project.

It will be the first time that Japanese satellites are launched by an Indian rocket, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA.

The Tokyo Institute of Technology team, led by Associate Prof. Saburo Matsunaga, refurbished a personal digital assistant for use as the control system of the Cute satellite, the third of its kind. The satellite also has equipment for observing auroras and other radiation rays.

The team launched the first Cute series satellite from Russia in June 2003 and the second from Japan in February 2006.

Using the Seeds satellite, the Nihon University team, led by Associate Prof. Yasuyuki Miyazaki, plans to conduct an experiment, in which recorded voice data are sent to the earth from the space on ham radio frequencies.

The first Seeds series satellite was launched by a Russian rocket in July last year, but the rocket crashed soon after the launch.END

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