Japan will be Launching 16 Educational Ham-Sats

The first of the new birds to be launched will be the
amateur radio satellite HORYU-2 built by students at the
Kyushu Institute of Technology.  Its mission is to take
pictures of the Earth using a small C-MOS camera called
SCAMP that was developed by the University of Surrey in the
UK.  The SCAMP camera takes a 640x480 pixel picture in the
popular JPEG format. That means from 700 km altitude, one
pixel corresponds to 1.6 km.

HORYU-2 will be followed in July by the transport of several
items to the International Space Station.  This mission will
deliver the Japanese Experiment Module Small Satellite
Orbital Deployer or JEM along with the Japanese CubeSats WE-
WISH, FITSAT-1 and RAIKO.  These CubeSats should be deployed
from the ISS in September using the JEM and robot arm.

FITSAT-1 may be the most interesting of these.  It will use
a neodymium magnet for attitude control.  It will also have
multiple downlinks.  These include CW on 437.250 MHz, AX.25
on 437.445 MHz and a 4 watt high speed data transmitter on
5840 MHz.  The latter is capable of sending a 640 by 480 VGA
JPEG image in 6 seconds.

In addition to its other experiments, FITSAT-1 will also
carry a set of high power LED's that will be driven with
100W pulses to produce extremely bright flashes.  It is
hoped, will be observable by the unaided eye or with small
binoculars from the ground.  Both the 5840 MHz and optical
downlinks have a high power consumption so it may be that
they are only activated only over Japan.

In December the TSUBAME satellite is planned to be launched
on a Japanese H-IIA booster. It will carry a CW beacon on
437.250 MHz and AX.25 packet at 1200 and 9600 bit per second
telemetry on 437.505 MHz.  The remaining satellites will be
placed into orbit on subsequent  flights.