KN4YZY

Amateur Radio · Alexandria, VA

German PocketQubes ERMINAZ-2U and 2V Become AO-129 and AO-130

Three small CubeSats drifting away from a deployer outside the International Space Station, with a solar array at left and Earth below
Three small educational CubeSats just after release from the International Space Station in 2022 (not the ERMINAZ satellites, which are even smaller PocketQubes). Image: NASA

Two new ham satellites now have OSCAR numbers. ERMINAZ-2U and ERMINAZ-2V, tiny PocketQubes built by teams from AMSAT-DL in Germany, were designated AO-129 and AO-130 on October 23. They rode a Falcon 9 rideshare out of Vandenberg on October 1.

It was a bumpy start. The space tug released them early, and AMSAT-DL lost two days of tracking. A third sister, ERMINAZ-2X, is still silent. The two working birds carry pre-stored SSTV images and digipeaters, and AO-129’s digipeater has already been switched on during testing, so keep an ear out.

Source: AMSAT News Service bulletin ANS-298

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