The RAX-1 CubeSat has completed its mission. Unfortunately, an anomaly on the solar panels resulted in degradation of power generation until, after several months, RAX-1 was unable to generate power. This anomaly ultimately resulted in the premature end of the mission. Despite this early end, the RAX-1 mission still made great strides in CubeSat design, and was able to execute bistatic radar measurements that had never before been performed with a CubeSat. All other subsystems also performed well.
The team is busy applying the lessons learned from RAX-1 to the design of a second flight unit, RAX-2, which has an upcoming launch through the NASA Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program scheduled for October 2011.
A summary of the anomaly and our resolution plan was recently presented at the 2011 Cubesat Workshop in San Luis Obispo, Calif., and may be viewed by clicking here and advancing the video stream to 18:06.
More details on RAX-2 will be posted as the work progresses!
