Dear All,

Happy New Year 2015!

One month has past since Deep Space Sculpture “ARTSAT2:DESPATCH(FO-81)” was put into an Earth-escape orbit as a piggyback payload of H-IIA F26 launched at December 3, 2014 from Tanegashima Space Center, JAXA. It is estimated to have stopped sending radio waves since the battery of DESPATCH already ran out (We predicted that the battery will work for 27 days according to the running time of the transmitter).

Today January 3, the main control station, Tama Art University Ground Station, decided to conclude the operation of DESPATCH. Many people supported and cooperated us throughout the design and development of DESPATCH. In addition, many excellent many ham radio operator received and reported super weak radio waves of DESPATCH from deep space. To have this opportunity, I would like once again to thank all of them very much.

Reception reports of DESPATCH are summarized on the following page.

Reception Reports
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WP-FzXHe8axAzNy44SGbKpJqIRKWHAcIP9vXnaHMb6g/edit#gid=0

Finally, we had two reception reports at 4.7 million kilo-meters from the Earth (more than 12 times of the distance to the Moon). They were far beyond what we expected. They are the the longest communication distance in the world between two amateur radio stations.

Orbital elements of DESPATCH is as follows (J2000 heliocentric ecliptic coordinates).

- Semi-major axis a : 1.003881127 [AU]
- Eccentricity e : 0.08741828512
- Inclination i : 6.796995362 [deg]
- Argument of perihelion w : 96.90057903 [deg]
- Longitude of the ascending node W : 250.5520871 [deg]
- Mean anomaly at epoch M : 101.6280436 [deg]
- Epoch : 2457023.50000 [JD]
(Time of perihelion : 2456919.7870655278675 [JD])

cf. Orbital elements of EARTH : http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html

Celestial sphere position and orbital trajectory of DESPATCH can be checked anytime on the following web pages.

– Celestial Sphere
http://artsat.jp/project/despatch/celestial

– Orbital Position
http://artsat.jp/project/despatch/orbit

Transmission of the radio wave from DESPATCH has ended. However, the life of DESPATCH as a sculpture around the sun is almost eternal. We calculated the orbit (the distance from the Earth) of DESPATCH for 500 years from now.

http://artsat.jp/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/500years.png

http://artsat.jp/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/500years_large.png

DESPATCH will continue to orbit around the sun as an artificial asteroid. By examining the calculated results for the local minimum value of the distance between the Earth, DESPATCH will approaches to less than 1 million km from Earth after about 350 years. Possibly it will approach more closer to the Earth due to the interaction with unpredictable other celestial bodies.

We are glad if you think of DESPATCH as the most distant artwork in the world sometimes in the future.

ARTSAT project will continue to the future. We already started the conceptual design of next ARTSAT3. We kindly ask for your continuous support and cooperation for the project.

January 3, 2014
ARTSAT Project

Dear all,

The DESPATCH spacecraft is still alive over 5,000,000km far away.

As it is in the phase3, the cosmic poem finished to send.
Now the members are trying to reconstruct the data.

You can see the process from: https://github.com/ARTSAT/DespatchTelemetry
The screen shot pictures are included here, and the decoded data is listed in the file named “poem.txt”.

The data are only bits raw,
but you will get the meaning after you apply the format infomation on the wiki:
http://despatch.artsat.jp/en/Cooperative_Data_Reconstruction

Thank you!
de ji1izr/Masahiro

Very very weak. I am not completely sure this is artsat2:despatch but the signal has the same pattern as my previous report on artsat2.
Timing and Doppler shift correlates with information – Distance 4.694.194km

73 Rob PE1ITR

OSCAR Number Administrator Bill Tynan, W3XO issued this announcement this evening:
“Since DESPATCH appears to have met all of the requirements for an OSCAR number, including IARU coordination, I hereby with the authority vested in me be by the AMSAT-NA President, do confer on DESPATCH, the OSCAR number Fuji OSCAR 81 or FO-81.”
Continuing, Bill wrote, “I use the Fuji designation in recognition of the long history of contributions the Japanese have made to Amateur Radio satellites. I trust that Fuji OSCAR-81’s mission will be successful and much valuable data will be collected.”
Akihiro Kubota replied from Japan, “It is a great honor for us to receive the OSCAR number from AMSAT. We are very glad to hear it! FO-81 form the name of Fuji is also special for us. DESPATCH will transmit its beacon until this Xmas. We will keep informed of the status of the mission and share it over the world.”

AMSAT congratulates the DESPATCH and ARTSAT teams!

We are proud to announce that on 9 December 2014, at 9:50:23 p.m. UTC we received signals from the ARTSAT 2: DESPATCH space probe, which was at this time at distance of 2.715.228 km from Earth. According to the status on 10 December 2014 it is a record distance. No one else on Earth received radio signal from this space probe from such a distance.

Our station operators during all of seven nights were: Piotr SP5MG, Piotr SP5ULN, Lukasz SQ5RWU and Michał SQ5KTM.
Technical support: SQ7GMO, SQ5DRC, team of a few PIAP Institute employees
Guests invited to our station: SP5XMU, SQ5NWI, SQ5AAG, and some more persons.

We have made a new record!
Now we are listening Artsat2/Despatch sonde from deep space distance 2.316.759km, 7,7 light seconds away! Our today great crew: SP5ULN [Piotr], SP5MG [Piotr], SQ5RWU [Lukasz], SQ5KTM [Michal], SQ7GMO [Arek], SQ5AAG [Jacek], Sebastian P. and PIAP Team [www.piap.eu].

21:44 UTC thaks Rob, PE1ITR

Great news from Poland! We are listening Artsat2/Despatch sonde from deep space distance 1.919.642km with crew: SP5ULN [Piotr], SP5MG [Piotr], SQ5RWU [Lukasz], SQ5KTM [Michal], SQ7GMO [Arek] and PIAP Team.

ARTSAT2:DESPATCH carries a 7 W CW transmitter on 437.325 MHz.
Onboard will be the first sculpture ever to be carried into deep space. The ARTSAT2: DESPATCH mission is seeking “exceptionally skilled ham operators” as part of its “cooperative diversity communication” experiment. This effort will attempt to intercept signals from the spacecraft not only at the ground station in Tokyo, but at Amateur Radio stations around the world, “in order to reconstruct the original data from the spacecraft.”

Tonight reception of Artsat2/Despatch satellite from over 1.502.851km far away :)
Ham group: SP5ULN, SP5MG, SQ5RWU, SQ5KTM, SP5XMU and PIAP Team

 

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Dear AMSAT members,

DESPATCH’ reception reports we’ve received are summarized:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WP-FzXHe8axAzNy44SGbKpJqIRKWHAcIP9vXnaHMb6g/edit#gid=0

We received 33 reports from 7 countries, Japan, Czech Republic, Russia, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, and Buenos Aires.
Thank you very much for your cooperations. We’re waiting for further reports from you! The transmission of will last about for more 10 days (until 5,500,000km).

http://despatch.artsat.jp/en/Cooperative_Data_Reconstruction

If you cannot find your name in spite your reception, please contact→ info@artsat.jp

Updated at 07/12/2014 10:00 (JST)

Akihiro Kubota, ARTSAT project