Satellites design

The satellites in the constellation are identical 51 × 57 × 82 cm spacecraft of 38.5 kg (85 lb) mass. The satellites are equipped with an imaging system operating in visible light and infrared. The constellation will allow for commercially available real-time Earth imaging and video with a ground resolution of 1 m (3 ft 3 in). The satellites were developed based on the experience gained on the BugSat 1 prototype satellite.

Missions

The Aleph-1 constellation will consist of more than 300 satellites. The first two satellites were launched as piggy-back payloads on a Chinese Long March 4B rocket in May 2016 from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center into a 500 km Sun-synchronous orbit with an inclination of 97.5°. The third satellite was launched as a piggy-back payload on a Long March 4B launch vehicle in June 2017. The fourth and fifth satellites were launched as piggy-backs on a Long March 2D rocket in February 2018. The sixth satellite was launched on a rideshare mission on a Vega rocket in September 2020. Satellites number seven and eight were launched as piggy-backs on a Long March 2D rocket in January 2020. Satellites number 9-18 were launched on a Long March 6 launch vehicle on 6 November 2020.

Ground communications

An U/V transponder with 2 watts of output power for 8 GHz downlink and 2 GHz uplink will be operating on 100 kHz bandwidth.

LabOSat / MeMOSat payloads

MeMOSat, developed by the LabOSat Group, designed and built by a group of scientists at the National Atomic Energy Commission (Spanish: Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica (CNEA)), the National Institute of Industrial Technology (Spanish: Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial (INTI)), the National University of General San Martín (Spanish: Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM)) and National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET).

This memory was specially designed to operate in harsh environments and adverse conditions, such as the strong radiation it must withstand in space. Its main objective is to test electronic components that will be commercialized in the future. To do this, the memory is made up of two metallic films with an oxide between about 20 nm thick, with electrical resistance properties, that can send information from the satellites, allowing to study their behavior in these hostile environments.

AMSAT payload

Additionally, ÑuSat-1 carries a U/V linear transponder called LUSEX provided by AMSAT Argentina (AMSAT-LU) to offer services to the HAM community.