Today I received an email from the ZAcube-1 ground station operators that they had received the first image made by ZAcube-1 (TshepisoSat).
Earlier this week a quick checkout of the payload board was done. The sub-system board was powered on and a few telemetry values were requested with all response values indicating good health. The board was successfully switched off again.
On the morning of 14 December the satellite was again commanded to switch on the payload board and a sequence of commands were sent to capture an image and store it in the on-board storage. During the following two passes the image was successfully downloaded using the CPUT/F’SATI built VHF/UHF radio transceiver in its 9k6 bps G3RUH/GMSK mode.
In the image the sun can be seen along with lens flare caused by the camera being pointed towards the sun. The black dot in the bottom right is most likely caused by overload of camera’s CMOS sensor by the sun. The spacecraft is not stabilised in three axis, so capturing images is a best effort affair (imaging is not the main focus of the mission). We can hopefully capture an image showing the earth in the upcoming days.
Original source: F’SATI news page
