This project of the University of Surrey, England. The satellite was built and launched within 6 months.
Launched March 1984 on a Thor-Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air force base. This was the first satellite to carry a store and forward messaging system.
UO-11 reached orbit and became active, and has remained such for it’s 30 year history although the satellite is no longer fully functional.
In 2008 it was determined that there was no viable battery backup functioning, only the solar panels were available to provide power. With the watchdog time and eclipse schedule during orbits, the satellite has a 20.7 day cycle of 10.35 days on and 10.35 days off. UO-11 also suffers from drift in it’s on board clock.
Currently all of the beacons are inactive save for the 145.825 MHz beacon.
NORAD catalog number: 14781
Frequencies are as follows:
Downlink
-145.825 FM 1k2 AFSK ASCII
Downlink
-435.025 FM 1k2 AFSK ASCII / 4k8 PSK – Non functional
Downlink
-2401.5 S Band – Non functional
Related web sites:
G3CWV
