Be the First to Record EIRSAT-1 Telemetry!
Be the First to Record EIRSAT-1 Telemetry!
EIRSAT-1 or Educational Irish Research Satellite 1, built by a team of students at University College Dublin is scheduled to be launched on 1 December 2023 at 18:18 UTC. EIRSAT-1 will downlink its telemetry in the Amateur Radio UHF band at 437.1 MHz. European Space agency is calling all Radio Amateurs, popularly known as Ham Radio Operators, to listen for the first signs of activity of the satellite in orbit. EIRSAT-1 is planned to be injected into Sun Synchronous Oribt at an altitude of about 520 km, which is about 100 km above the orbit of the International Space Station. Antenna deployment will begin about 45 minutes after that. It is estimated that first transmission from EIRSAT-1 will start at 20:27 UTC (1.57 am IST on 2 December 2023), while the satellite is over the Pacific Ocean.
European Space Agency has provided the preliminary TLE for tracking EIRSAT-1 for all the satellite enthusiasts out there:
EIRSAT-1
1 00000U 230000 23333.82190972 .00000000 00000-0 21496-3 0 16
2 00000 97.4600 34.4900 0004785 235.8810 -166.6890 15.20617776000008
The whole of this TLE or two line elements, also called Keplerian elements, can be copied and pasted to text box at the Satellite tracker based on two line elements webpage. Please note that the name of the satellite in the first line above the TLE should also be included and the ‘Load TLE’ button clicked. Next step is to give your location. There are several cities in India available on the drop down menu and also for other coutries. If you do not reside in one of those cities, there is also provision to provide the latitude and longitude below that. You can find your latitude and longitude from your qrz.com page if you have added your Maiden Head grid locator there.
The time format in both UTC and your local time will be displayed in the text boxes below that. After that you can proceed with generation of listings on any of the three options at the bottom of the page. Options are for: 170 hour at 1 hour interval, 24 hour at 1 minute interval and 240 hour (10 days) at 1 minute interval.
I tried generation for 24 hours at 1 minute interval and got a list with 1440 lines! Scrolled down to the expected first telemetry time of 1.57 am on 2 December 2023 and this is the screen shot. Obviously, this information is not enough for me to track the satellites.
Went back and did the same process for ARISS (Amateur Radio on International Space Station), obtaining TLE from the N2YO website. The difference was quite obvious, with data displayed showing Azimuth and Elevation for each second in a line. The data output which I got for EIRSAT-1 shows on ‘NaN’ instead, in all the fields. So there is something wrong in my method! Even if I get the correct data, it is not easy to figure out the satellite pass from a set of several lines of data. I need something better.
Took to Google for help and I reached the AMSAT UK page which describes the process of adding a new satellite to Gpredict by the ‘Update TLE data from local files’ method. The page has also mentioned that the preliminary TLE contains only a dummy Satellite Catalogue Number because the latter is only assigned once a satellite enters its orbit! Here is the comparison for EIRSAT-1 and ARISS. It is also mentioned at the AMSAT UK page that “Take note of the Satellite Catalogue Number used in your TLEs!” I tried importing the TLE file to Gpredict and it did not succeed. May be I have to wait to get the Satellite Catalogue Number before I can proceed further.
Links to all pages discussed have been provided on my blog page, the link to which is given in the desription box of the video for those interested to try out and possibly get better results. If you get better information, please post it as a comment below the video and it will be much appreciated by all of us in our VU LEO Satellite Repeater contact group as we are eagerly waiting for the launch. ESA is also giving a special QSL card to the first one from each continent to hear EIRSAT-1 within a week, the details of which are available on the ESA page linked in the beginning.