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FASTSAT Fact Sheet

Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT) Microsatellite

The FASTSAT fact sheet provides background information on the FASTSAT project.

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Artist concept of space weather showing an active Sun with flares and a CME in the upper right, the Earth in the lower right with types of technology affected by space weather to the lower left; satellites, airplanes, the ISS and ground-based electrical lines.

Heliophysics

Studying the Sun-Earth connection.

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FASTSAT Latest News and Updates

11.14.2011 - New FASTSAT Discoveries Paint Detailed View of Region Near Earth

A picturesque lake reflects a beautiful green aurora in North Pole, Alaska.

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Auroras are but one part of a complex system of magnetic fields and charged particles surrounding Earth. Instruments on FASTSAT are beginning to paint a picture of how the different components act in concert. Image courtesy of Bud Kuenzli Space around Earth is anything but a barren vacuum. The area seethes with electric and magnetic fields that change constantly. Charged particles flow through, moving energy around, creating electric currents, and producing the aurora. Many of these particles stream in from the solar wind, starting out 93 million miles away on the surface of the sun. But some areas are dominated by particles of a more local source: Earth's atmosphere.

These are the particles being watched by FASTSAT’s Miniature Imager for Neutral Ionospheric Atoms and Magnetospheric Electrons (MINI-ME) instrument. For one well-defined event, scientists have compared MINI-ME's observations to those from two other instruments. The event shows a detailed picture of this dynamic region, with a host of interrelated phenomena -- such as electric current and outflowing particles – occurring together.

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FASTSAT-HSV01 Tracking

The Two Line Element, or TLE, set for FASTSAT-HSV01 describing its orbit, current as of April 18, 2011, is:

1 90023U 0 11106.39950167 +.00000129 +00000-0 +26424-4 0 0128
2 90023 071.9734 175.4809 0017113 031.2511 328.9618 14.7651779502174

TLE's are explained on the CelesTrak website.

Latest News and Features

FASTSAT Mission Update

PISA's magnetometer was called upon to support the main attitude determination and control system (ADCS) on FASTSAT following an anomaly on Feb 16, 2011.
NASA's NanoSail-D Satellite Continues to Slowly De-Orbit

NanoSail-D is slowly descending after successfully orbiting the Earth's upper atmosphere since deploying its sail on Jan. 20.

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FASTSAT Overview

Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT) Microsatellite

FASTSAT is NASA’s first microsatellite designed to create a capability that increases opportunities for secondary, scientific and technology payloads, or rideshares, to be flown at lower cost than previously possible. The overall objective of the FASTSAT mission is to demonstrate the capability to build, design and test a microsatellite platform to enable governmental, academic and industry researchers to conduct low-cost scientific and technology experiments on an autonomous satellite in space.

FASTSAT establishes a platform and environment where science and technology research experiment payloads of low- and mid-level complexity can be flown responsively and affordably in low-Earth orbit