Author Archives: James Cutler

At the SRI 60 foot dish, we successfully received RAX-2 beacons over the MHX 2400 radio!  Nine beacons were decoded during the middle of the pass.  Over the next two days, we’ll characterize the link and see how well it … Continue reading →

Here is a great photo of the sun spots related to recent solar storms.  We are in the process of downloading RAX data related to the storm.

With all the recent solar activity these past two days, the science team is excited.  Hasan Bahcivan exclaimed, “The storm is riding magnos like a rodeo!”  Two hours later, he emails in frustration, This is so annoying! 16:30  H component … Continue reading →

Experiment 1003 was conducted on 12/18/2011 in conjunction with PFISR. In addition to 100 microsecond pulses for RAX reception, PFISR transmitted 480 microsecond pulses in 6 directions for diagnostics measurements of the ionosphere, such as electron density and electric fields. … Continue reading →

Fortunately, RAX-2 survived a close encounter with another object in space!  The United States Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) reported a close conjuction, less than 218m approach predicted for 12/20.  We have beacons from 12/21 so R2 is doing well. … Continue reading →

Last week, RAX-2 took data while over head of the Resolute Bay Incoherent Scatter Radar (RISR) during Experiment 1002.  The Range-Time-Intensity plot is below.  Aspect angles corresponding to the irregularity altitudes of 100 and 300 km are shown by the … Continue reading →

With increased ground station support from the world, we are continuing to increase our daily amounts of downloaded data.  RAX data is organized in radio packets or RAPs for short.  I’m sure there is a nice hip hop joke in … Continue reading →

RAX-2 (R2) continues to operate well and broadcasts beacons globally.  We are in the process of downlinking an extended telemetry collection file as well as filling the back log of archived beacons from on board the satellites.  Ground stations in … Continue reading →

RAX-2 continues to do well and we are progressing in our planned operations of the satellite. The flight computer is stable and is keeping track of time. This is allowing to store commands that are executed remotely at the proper … Continue reading →

Thanks to HAMs worldwide, we have collected over 553 beacons from RAX-2. It continues to remain healthy and working well from what we can see. We are starting to command it this week and plan to request beacon archives today.