\n<\/p>\n
A group of students at Cornell University is seeking participation from radio amateurs who are equipped with satellite stations for help in listening for signals from a retroreflective laser sail that is scheduled to be deployed later this week. The sail is currently attached to a 1U CubeSat that was launched early Tuesday, December 2, 2025, from the International Space Station, but will separate and become its own free-flying spacecraft equipped with four tiny \u201cChipSat\u201d flight computers that will transmit telemetry data back to Earth.<\/p>\n
This is the first flight of their ChipSats, and it is this data that the students seek help detecting, according to Ph.D. candidate Joshua Umansky-Castro, who has an amateur radio license; call sign KD2WTQ. The light sail\u2019s ChipSats will be transmitting data using the LoRa\u00ae digital protocol on 437.400 MHz. The sail, stowed within the CubeSat, is expected be released a couple of days after deployment \u2014 tentatively this Thursday, December 4 \u2014 and will likely function independently for no more than 48 hours due to the drag created by the sail.<\/p>\n
Additional information, including LoRa parameters and links to a list of compatible receivers and the decoder file, may be found at\u00a0alphacubesat.cornell.edu<\/b><\/span> in the ChipSat Ground Station Guide (docx).<\/p>\n It is hoped that the ChipSat and light sail will become the trailblazer for future missions around the solar system, and one day to our closest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n