FloripaSat 2b (GOLDS-UFSC EQM)

FloripaSat 2b [UFSC]

The Brazilian FloripaSat 2b is a 2U Cubesat technology demonstration mission entirely developed by SpaceLab students at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), Florianópolis, Brazil.

GOLDS-UFSC is the primary payload of FloripaSat-2B and has both educational and scientific objectives. The mission is being developed by students and researchers of the Space Technologies Research Laboratory (SpaceLab) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), with students participating in the design and operation of the CubeSat and gaining experience in radio communications, digital communications, radio electronics and antenna systems.

The non-amateur mission is intended to validate the Environmental Data Collector (EDC) developed by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The EDC receives signals from platforms belonging to the Global Open coLlecting Data System (GOLDS) and is designed for use on CubeSats of 1U or larger. Received data is forwarded to the ground segment through the satellite's main communications link.

Another scientific objective is the evaluation of radiation effects on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic components. The mission carries a radiation instrument previously developed for the FloripaSat-1 mission, while both the EDC and the service platform use COTS components.

The amateur-radio payload provides a digital store-and-forward repeater, allowing licensed radio amateurs worldwide to exchange text messages through the satellite. Amateur-radio operations are conducted by licensed students. Telemetry is transmitted in NGHam format at 468 MHz, while the EDC payload operates at 401 MHz. Software for accessing the amateur-radio experiment and telemetry data is provided to the amateur-radio community.

The satellite was launched as one of several payloads on the maiden flight of the Hanbit-Nano rocket, but failed to reach orbit.