SunSpace was established in 2000 as a spin-off from Stellenbosch University following the successful launch of SUNSAT by NASA with a Delta-II launch vehicle. During the past decade SunSpace has developed and delivered numerous satellite components, subsystems and two flight model satellite, now operational in space. This blog documents the mission of Sumbandila (funded by the DST), launched on a Soyuz-2.1b on 17 September 2009. SunSpace places a high premium on a strong partnership with the South African Government for supplying the ongoing satellite needs of our government.

24 October 2009

Fine Sun Sensor image

This image of the sun was taken by die Fine Sun Sensor today.  The sun centroid is then extracted by SW using a region-growing algorithm.  The centroid is required by the more advanced attitude determination estimators in order to 3-axis stabilize the satellite.














Below is a graph depicting the extracted X and Y coordinates of the centroid, calculated 1s apart, for a duration of 1 hour and 4 minutes (total sunlit part of one complete orbit).



Posted by Sunspace Administrator at 10/24/2009 05:29:00 PM

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Current Keplerian Elements

Last Update: 1 Febr 2010
Element set: 404

Sumbandila
1 35870U 09049F   10032.48635300  .00000433  00000-0  21444-4 0  4040
2 35870 097.3525 084.8560 0011505 166.1189 300.7196 15.22856092 20818