News | Darwin Co
The Philippines’ second cube satellite (CubeSat) “Maya-2” was successfully deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) on March 14, 2021 at around 7:20 pm Philippine Time (PHT). This marks the country’s fourth successful attempt in sending a satellite to space in cooperation with Japan.
Maya-2, together with two other identical CubeSats from Japan and Paraguay which were all developed under Kyushu Institute of Technology’s (Kyutech) fourth Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite (BIRDS-4) Project, was finally released into orbit from the “Kibo” Module of the ISS after its successful launch onboard the Cygnus NG-15 rocket last February 21, 2021.
Barely an hour after its deployment, signals from Maya-2 were already picked up by the ground receiving station team from PUGAD (Philippine Universities for Ground Archiving and Data Reception) located at the University Laboratory for Small Satellites and Space Engineering Systems Building at the UP Diliman Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute.
As the satellite passed above the country at around 8:10 pm PHT, the team confirmed in a livestream that they have received beacon messages sent by Maya-2 through Morse-coded Carrier Waves. These messages will be decoded by a team in Kyutech which will verify the status of the satellite.
The 1-unit nanosatellite was designed by Filipino scholars taking up their doctoral degrees in Kyutech. They were sent through the STeP-UP project of the Space Technology and Applications Mastery, Innovation and Advancement (STAMINA4Space) Program under the Department of Science and Technology.
According to STAMINA4Space, Maya-2, similar to its predecessor Maya-1, is a technology demonstration and educational platform capable of collecting data remotely by Store-and-Forward mechanism and capturing images and videos using its camera. It aims to gather weather data and infectious disease analysis through ground sensors and also test the newly developed Perovskite solar cells attached to it.
“After seeing the infant space programs in many countries, I can say that the Philippines is one of the best examples of a success story… for Maya-2, three students from the Philippines are engaged and play key roles in the entire BIRDS-4 project. I am sure that they can be an important asset to the future Philippine space program,” BIRDS Project principal investigator Dr. Mengu Cho said, happy with the Maya-2 deployment.
Izrael Zenar Bautista, Mark Angelo Purio, and Marloun Sejera, the Filipino space engineers who developed the country’s second CubeSat, started working on Maya-2 back in 2018 and had to go through multiple delays in finalizing their work due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The development of Maya-2, and BIRDS-4 satellites in general, was special due to the fact that it was affected by the pandemic. Not being able to gather physically also add to the challenges we faced during the final stages of the project as most of the work such as troubleshooting and finalizing software and satellite assembly were done with fewer people from the team,” Purio said.
Another challenge for the team was that as first-timers in satellite development, they had to face a steep learning curve on top of their academic load and research. According to Bautista, the team had to meet several strict deadlines to ensure the launch of the nanosatellite on time.
Nonetheless, the team successfully delivered the country’s historic second CubeSat into space and is currently monitoring and preparing it for its mission.
“Right now we hope to execute all our missions with the help of other BIRDS ground stations around the world so that we could utilize the satellites to their full extent,” said Bautista. According to Sejera, the team is now preparing for the satellite operation, which includes satellite health monitoring and mission execution.
While the Maya-2 team is focused on the satellite’s operations, other groups of Filipino scholars are already working on more Maya launches in the future with Maya-3, Maya-4, Maya-5, and Maya-6 already in their respective design and development phases under the STeP-UP project.
Maya-3 and Maya-4 will be the first CubeSats to be built by a Philippine university domestically. The project aims to gain and locally extend the knowledge and skills on satellite development acquired from foreign schooling and utilize the domestic capabilities for satellite development. These satellites are currently undergoing space environment testing in Japan and are expected to be launched later this year.
Furthermore, a team of eight Filipino scholars who will be working on Maya-5 and Maya-6 was recently introduced to the public in an online event last November 2020. They will be expected to gather and begin building the satellite soon.
These satellites that will follow Maya-2 will be the next step in STAMINA4Space’s campaign of building up the country’s capabilities and technologies in space science for the ultimate goal of establishing our own local space industry.
“In order to build and sustain this ecosystem, the academe must ensure that capable researchers and scientists and engineers will continue to be developed that will sustain this industry and ecosystem,” STeP-UP project leader Paul Jason Co emphasized.
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