The Russians, in commemoration of their 50th anniversary of their launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, commissioned a small satellite called Yubileiny which apparently launched in the last day. Members of the amsat-bb list have been picking up CW telemetry and some digital signals from the bird. It sounds really interesting, and includes a 2m uplink receiver and a 70cm downlink transciever. I haven’t had time to go over the details of the bird, but it sounds very interesting. I’ve added the orbital elements to my own program, and find that in about six hours, we’ll have a 70 degree pass, so I’ll try to pick it up, if not today, then in the next few days. It has a fairly high 1500km orbit, so it stays above horizon for close to 20 minutes, and has a wide footprint which seems intriguing. More when I find out more:

“Yubileiny” is a next generation small satellite

Addendum: From their website:

With the help of equipment that is installed on the satellite, radio-amateurs all over the world will be able to receive information on the history of space development and domestic cosmonautics achievements. The spacecraft is expected to work in the cyclic operation: every 4 minutes spoken messages, video pictures, and signals imitating call-signs of the first artificial satellite will be transmitted over the radio channel at the international frequency range of 435 MHz.

Neat!

Addendum: I recorded the CW beacon as it came over on its last pass. Didn’t hear any of the other kinds of data it is supposed to be sending, but maybe I just caught it at a bad time, or its cycle was distrupted. In any case:

Yubileiny recorded on my Arrow + FT-817ND

Addendum²: Gary asked about some of the details. I am using my own satellite software code to predict passes, written in Python and based on the Plan13 algorithms of G3RUH. The orbital elements for the sats were posted on the amsat-bb mailing list. I’ve heard that one of these two (fairly close) objects is the satellite:

OBJECT B
1 32954U 08025B   08145.10200117  .00000024  00000-0  10000-3 0    23
2 32954 082.4959 138.5618 0019422 319.0397 040.9226 12.42638976    61
OBJECT C
1 32955U 08025C   08145.10180017  .00000010  00000-0  00000+0 0    20
2 32955 082.5031 138.5641 0019114 306.5063 053.4208 12.43247202    67

I found OBJECT C to be the closest. I was monitoring the frequency that was mentioned on the list, which is around 435.315, which will begin about 10khz higher at the beginning of the pass. If you listen to the above MP3, you can hear the frequency dropping as the satellite approaches. As yet, I haven’t heard that there will be any uplink capability for amateurs. I’ve also heard that others are recording FM based transmissions which might include slow scan tv or the like. I’ll keep an ear open for it later, and let you know what I find out.