OSSI-1 (standing for Open Source Satellite Initiative-1) is an

amateur radio satellite An amateur radio satellite is an artificial satellite built and used by amateur radio operators. It forms part of the Amateur-satellite service. These satellites use amateur radio frequency allocations to facilitate communication between amate ...

launched in 2013 with Bion-M No.1. Bion-M was launched into orbit at 10:00 UTC on April 19, 2013, from

Baikonur Cosmodrome The Baikonur Cosmodrome ( kk, Байқоңыр ғарыш айлағы, translit=Baiqoñyr ğaryş ailağy, ; russian: Космодром Байконур, translit=Kosmodrom Baykonur, ) is a spaceport in an area of southern Kazakhstan leased to R ...

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

, with 6 small satellites, including OSSI-1. OSSI-1 detached from Bion-M at 16:15 UTC. OSSI-1 is the pet project of Hojun Song, a

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula * Korean cuisine * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl **Korean dialects and the Jeju language ** ...

artist and amateur radio operator. He worked on it for seven years, designing and building the satellite using off-the-shelf components rather than equipment that had been certified for use in space. The most expensive aspect of the project was the launch, which cost US$100,000. OSSI-1 is a 1U

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 ...

with 100mm sides, weighing 950g. It uses an

arduino Arduino () is an open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed unde ...

microcontroller, a

lithium-ion A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses the reversible reduction of lithium ions to store energy. It is the predominant battery type used in portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. It also sees ...

battery and a J mode UHF/VHF transceiver. The satellite has a

Morse code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...

beacon transmitting "OS0 DE OSSI1 ANYOUNG" on 145.980 MHz and 4

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor Electronics, device that Light#Light sources, emits light when Electric current, current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy i ...

lights with a total power of 44

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...

s to flash Morse code messages, using an open protocol. The project developers announced on 24 April 2013 that they had not yet received a signal from the satellite and were concerned that the

Two-line element set A two-line element set (TLE) is a data format encoding a list of orbital elements of an Earth-orbiting object for a given point in time, the ''epoch''. Using a suitable prediction formula, the state (position and velocity) at any point in the past ...

they were using to locate the satellite might be wrong. According to Korean amateur radio organisation KARL, Hojun Song had some difficulties launching a satellite as a private individual, connected to registering with space bodies and being allocated broadcast frequencies by the international telecoms regulator the

ITU The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

. A law requires knowledge of the launch date two years in advance which he was not able to give as he was sharing a launch with other experimental satellites. The amateur radio bands are nearly full but to use other bands would require more expensive specialist equipment and technical skills. In 2011 OSSI-1 signed a contract with a French nano satellite company for a

turnkey A turnkey, a turnkey project, or a turnkey operation (also spelled turn-key) is a type of project that is constructed so that it can be sold to any buyer as a completed product. This is contrasted with build to order, where the constructor builds ...

launch service in order to secure a launch date. The satellite re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on 30 June 2013. Source code for the satellite is available on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

References

External links

opensat.cc website (archived)

GitHub: ossicode
{{Orbital launches in 2013 Spacecraft launched in 2013 Amateur radio satellites CubeSats Spacecraft which reentered in 2013 Spacecraft launched by Soyuz-2 rockets Open-source hardware Free and open-source software