Maya-2 was a Filipino

nanosatellite A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites ca ...

. It succeeded

Maya-1 Maya-1 was a Filipino nanosatellite. It was developed under the Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite program (PHL-Microsat) and was jointly implemented by the University of the Philippines and the Department of Science and T ...

, the first Filipino nanosatellite, which was deorbited in November 2020.

Background

Maya-2 was a nanosatellite or a 1U-class

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats ...

measuring and weighing . It was the successor to

which ended its operations on November 23, 2020. Maya-2 was developed by Filipino students sent to the

Kyushu Institute of Technology is one of the 87 national universities in Japan. Located in Fukuoka Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, it is dedicated to education and research in the fields of science and technology. It is earlier abbreviated to KIT and is now officially a ...

(KIT) in Japan through the Department of Science and Technology's (DOST) Space Science and Technology Proliferation through University Partnerships (STeP-UP) project under the

STAMINA4Space Program The Space Technology and Applications Mastery, Innovation and Advancement (abbreviated and stylized as STAMINA4Space) is a space technology program by the Philippine government. It is considered as the successor program to the Philippine Scienti ...

. Maya-2 was developed under the fourth Joint Global Multination Birds Satellite (Birds-4) project initiated by the KIT. Under the program, two other identical CubeSats; a

Paraguayan Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...

( GuaraniSat-1) and a Japanese satellite (Tsuru). Maya-2 is part of a series of satellite named after the

Chestnut munia The chestnut munia or black-headed munia (''Lonchura atricapilla'') is a small passerine. It was formerly considered conspecific with the closely related tricoloured munia, but is now widely recognized as a separate species. This estrildid finch ...

(''Lonchura atricapilla''), one of the various birds known locally in the Philippines as the ''maya''.

Development

A team of three Filipino engineers, Izrael Zenar Bautista, Mark Angelo Purio, and Marloun Sejera, developed Maya-2. The three are DOST scholars pursuing doctorate degrees in

space engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is sim ...

at KIT. Bautista is also the project manager of the Birds-4 program. Development of Maya-2 began in 2018 but was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic. By March 2020, Maya-2 was already in its final stage of development and by September of the same year, the satellite was already turned over to the

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orb ...

(JAXA).

Instruments

The build of Maya-2 is relatively more advanced than Maya-1, its predecessor, and has off-the-shelf components. Maya-2 is equipped with instruments which was used for Maya-1 including an Automatic Packet Radio Service Digipeater. Differences from its predecessor include the use of

Perovskite solar cell A perovskite solar cell (PSC) is a type of solar cell that includes a perovskite-structured compound, most commonly a hybrid organic–inorganic lead or tin halide-based material as the light-harvesting active layer. Perovskite materials, such a ...

s as a power source and a different antenna design. Maya-2 also has an active altitude control instead of the passive control used by its predecessor.

Launch and mission

Maya-2 launched to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

(ISS) through

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...

Cygnus NG-15 NG-15, previously known as OA-15, was the fifteenth launch of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its fourteenth flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with ...

resupply mission. The S.S. Katherine Johnson Cygnus carrying cargo including Maya-2 was launched to space via the

Antares Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius. It has the Bayer designation α Scorpii, which is Latinised to Alpha Scorpii. Often referred to as "the heart of the scorpion", Antares is flanked by σ Scorpii and τ S ...

rocket on February 20, 2021, from Pad 0A of the

Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) is a commercial space launch facility located at the southern tip of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island in Virginia, just east of the Delmarva Peninsula and south of Chincoteague, Virgin ...

in Virginia, United States. The Cygnus spacecraft made a rendezvous with the ISS two days later, berthing to the ''Unity'' module of the space station. The satellite was deployed into

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

from the ISS on March 14, 2021, at around 11:20 UTC. After a 16-month mission, Maya-2 re-entered the atmosphere on July 5, 2022.

References

{{Philippine space program Satellites of the Philippines 2021 in the Philippines Spacecraft launched in 2021 CubeSats STAMINA4Space program