2022-03-15

The Launch of OreSat0,
Oregon's First satellite

On Tuesday March 15th, 2022, OreSat0 was launched into sun synchronous low earth orbit aboard Astra's LV0009 rocket from Kodiak, Alaska. The launch was arranged by our neighbors up in Seattle, Spaceflight Inc! Thank you Spaceflight!

Astra's LV0009 launched at 09:22 PDT on Tuesday March second. It took approximately 9 minutes to climb from sea level to 525 km above the Earth, where the rocket's second state deployed us into a "dusk to dawn" (0545 LTDN) sun synchronous low earth orbit (SSO).

At about 11:00am we received confirmation that OreSat0 had been successfully deployed from the second stage, and by that time, our deployable antennas should have deployed and we should have been sending our first telemetry beacons.

At 12:55pm PDT, we received our first telemetry packets from the SatNOGS global amateur radio satellite network, received by the Institute for Telecommunication Research (ITR), University of South Australia! The satellite was fully operational and, surprisingly, working as designed. No fires in space for us (yet).


Astra's "Rocket 3.3" is small enough to fit in a 40 ft shipping container! Built in Alameda, California, it's shipped around the US for launches.

We're way up there, at the very top of the second stage. Beneath that mission patch is a CubeSat deployer with OreSat0 in it! And a bunch of other satellites, which turn out to be "SpaceBEE" satellites from SWARM technologies.

Best mission patch ever.

We watched from the Rock Room in the PSU Engineering Building, holding our collective breaths for launch, deployment and first beacon.