by Katy Swordfisk
March 18th 2022
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It’s official: Oregon’s first satellite — also known as OreSat0 — was launched into low Earth orbit on March 15 aboard Astra's "LV0009" rocket from Kodiak, Alaska. OreSat0 was designed and built by the Portland State Aerospace Society (PSAS), an interdisciplinary student group at Portland State University. It’s the first in a series of three satellites destined for the stars and is about the size of a tissue box, but a tissue box containing solar panels, batteries, a color camera and an amateur radio system.
Andrew Greenberg, PSAS Faculty Advisor, said the launch took off at 9:22 a.m. on March 15 and OreSat0 was in orbit nine short minutes later.
“Our small group of space hipsters gathered in the rocket room to watch the launch with fancy bagels and pour over coffee, and then collectively held our breath for more than an hour,” Greenberg said. “The flight went smoothly, but then it took over an hour to get confirmation that the satellite was actually deployed from the rocket so we were super, super nervous for a while.”
Just before 1 p.m., the team received the first data packets from space over Australia confirming that “OMG, we have a working satellite in space!” Greenberg said.
PSAS already has close to 200 data packets from the satellite as it circles the Earth and Greenberg said it’s working better than anticipated. Experiments will begin shortly allowing PSAS to test their sensors and systems over the next few years until OreSat0 makes its journey home. In the meantime, PSAS is already building its next satellite, OreSat0.5, which is equipped with a better camera to guide its journey later this summer.
Here's where OreSat0 is right now:
https://uniclogs-cesium-megqz.ondigitalocean.app/
And here's the latest data:
https://dashboard.satnogs.org/d/g4anoOE7k/oresat0?orgId=1&refresh=10s