PicoDragon – Wikipedia

Vietnamese CubeSat

PicoDragon is a small satellite that followed the 1U type of CubeSat program built by Vietnam National Satellite Center belong to VAST and operated in space for 3 months.^[1]

It was the first product to be built in Vietnam in the space technology field. The target for this project is to co-operate in space technology development between Vietnam and Japan. It is also the first Vietnamese satellite to launch successfully to space. Before, there had been 4 satellites launched including: VNREDSat 1A, F-1, Vinasat-1 and Vinasat-2 but F-1 which failed when launching. Vinasat-1, Vinasat-2, VNREDSat 1A were all built by foreign partners or companies.^{[citation needed]}

Specifications[edit]

• Size: 10 by 10 by 11.35 centimetres (3.94 in × 3.94 in × 4.47 in)^[2]
• Weight: 0.983 kilograms (2.17 lb)
• Time operating: About 3 months
• Orbit
  • High: 410 kilometres (250 mi)
  • Inclination: 51.6 degrees
• Senses devices:
  • CMOS camera (640 × 480 dpi) to take picture about Earth
• Contact by wireless link
  • Broadcast station frequency about 437.250 MHz
  • Telemetry downlink 1k2 bit/s AFSK 800 mW AX.25 about 437.365 MHz
  • Very high frequency uplink use for control.

Journey[edit]

At 2:48 AM (Vietnamese time zone) 4 August 2013, PicoDragon was successfully launched to the ISS via the transport spacecraft HTV-4. PicoDragon was followed by ArduSat-1, ArduSat-X, TechEdSat-3 of United States and Kirobo robot of Japan were launched at Tanegashima by Kounotori of Japan.^[3] Before its placement into orbit from the ISS, it was held back for additional checks.^{[citation needed]}

PicoDragon was a 1U CubeSat project designed for low resolution Earth imagery and to test on-board systems.^[4]

On 19 November 2013 (Vietnamese time zone), PicoDragon was launched into orbit by the ISS.^[5] 4 hours later, some first signals were successfully received by the ground station in Japan. After that, the ground station of VNSC also received signals from PicoDragon. After more than 3 months in the orbit, PicoDragon completed the mission and burned when it entered the atmosphere.^[6]

Follow doctor Pham Anh Tuan, director of Vietnam National Satellite Center, after PicoDragon, Vietnam will build more satellites (10 kilograms (22 lb) in 2015 and 50 kilograms (110 lb) in 2017) and in 2020 will launch a 500 kilograms (1,100 lb) satellite to observing the Earth from space.^{[citation needed]}

References[edit]