PANSAT

PANSAT

Mission type	Amateur radio satellite
Operator	USAF
COSPAR ID	1998-064B
SATCAT no.	25520
Spacecraft properties
Launch mass	57 kg (126 lb)
Dimensions	50 cm (20 in)
Start of mission
Launch date	30 October 1998, 17:20 UTC
Rocket	Space Shuttle Discovery STS-95
Launch site	Kennedy LC-39B
Contractor	NASA
End of mission
Last contact	2003
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric
Regime	Low Earth
Eccentricity	0.00072
Perigee altitude	551 km (342 mi)
Apogee altitude	561 km (349 mi)
Inclination	28.5°
Period	95.8 minutes
Epoch	30 October 1998[1]
OSCAR

PANSAT (Petite Amateur Navy Satellite, also known as OSCAR 34) was an amateur radio satellite. It was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-95 mission as part of the third International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker (IEH-3) mission, on 30 October 1998 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.[2][3]

PANSAT satellite deployment from STS-95 Discovery's payload bay

The satellite was built by students from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. It offered the possibility of packet radio transmission in BPSK or Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum in the 70 cm band. The satellite was configured in a sphere-like shape, featuring 26 sides used for solar cell and antenna placement.[4] The spacecraft supplied direct-sequence, spread-spectrum modulation with an operating center frequency of 436.5 MHz, a bit rate of 9600 bit/s and 9 MB of message storage.

References

1. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "PANSAT". NSSDCA MAster Catalog. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
2. EOPortal.org. "PANSAT". Retrieved 11 February 2020.
3. Dirk Krebs, Gunter. "PANSAT (S97-D, PO 34, PANSAT-OSCAR 34)". Gunter's Space Page. Retrieved 13 Feb 2020.
4. Martin, Donald H. (2000). Communication Satellites. AIAA. ISBN 978-1-884989-09-4.