AlSat 1, Mozhayets 4 & Rubin 3-DSI

AlSat 1 (Algerian Satellite), a 90 kg enhanced microsatellite is Algeria's first national satellite and has been designed and constructed by SSTL at the Surrey Space Centre (UK) within a collaborative programme with the Algerian Centre National des Techniques Spatiales (CNTS). AlSat 1 is part of a wider international collaboration to launch the first constellation of Earth observation satellites specifically designed for disaster monitoring. The AlSat 1 enhanced microsatellite carries specially-designed Earth imaging cameras which provide 32-meters resolution imaging in 3 spectral bands (NIR, red, green) with an extremely wide imaging swath of 600 km on the ground that enables a revisit of the same area anywhere in the world at least every 4 days with just a single satellite. AlSat 1 is the first satellite in the Surrey-led Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) which will comprises 5 microsatellites in low Earth orbit by the end of 2003.

Mozhayets 3 was a small satellite to test spaceborne GLONASS receivers and new microsat systems. It was a navigational and scientific satellite, which was originaly built as a Strela-1M satellite. After having been used for many years as an educational display at the Mozhaisky military academy, students of the academy fitted completely new avionics and payload to the satellite bus. One of its experimental payloads is an Amateur Radio telemetry beacon (RS-20). RS-20 is transmitting CW telemetry on 145.818 and 435.319 MHz.

The mission goal of Rubin-3-DSI (DSI = dopolnitel'naya sistema izmereniya = Additional Measurement System) is to test the launch vehicle tracking possibilities outside the launch site telemetry system visibility areas. The most important ascent status parameters are transmitted via the Orbcomm constellation in near real time mode directly to the customer via e-mails (payload separation confirmation, flight event time etc).