ORCASat launch on CRS-26 from Kennedy Space Center

On  Sat. Nov. 19 at 2204 UTC (= 2:04 pm Pacific = 5:04 pm Eastern local time in Florida), Canada’s first satellite for astronomical purposes that was constructed by Canadian students, ORCASat ( https://www.orcasat.ca ), was scheduled to lift off from pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center, aboard CRS-26 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_CRS-26 ) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Cargo Dragon. Approximately 39 hours following its launch, CRS-26 docked with the International Space Station, and then ORCASat, together with the other cargo, transferred onto the ISS. Approximately a week following that, i.e. on or around Nov. 28, ORCASat was deployed from the ISS into its own orbit. ORCASat’s main ground station (on the UVic campus) will attempt to establish contact with ORCASat within 24 hours after its deployment from the ISS, and to begin ORCASat’s mission of calibrating optical photometry for multiple major astronomical observatories worldwide.

ORCASat is a 2U cubesat that contains two laser diode sources, at 660 nm and 840 nm, directed into a 2″ diameter integrating sphere ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrating_sphere ), as pictured near the bottom of https://www.orcasat.ca/mission and in https://www.orcasat.ca/design . The light output of the laser diode sources will be continuously monitored by a pair of Hamamatsu
photodiodes (one silicon, one InGaAs) also mounted on the integrating sphere. The two ORCASat light sources will be on and
flashing/modulated (in order to allow the precise subtraction of all solar & Earth reflection background light within image data analysis) for 15 seconds when within view of the selected ground site at night, per the pattern described in:

https://particle.phys.uvic.ca/~jalbert/ORCASatPayloadDatatakingProcedures.pdf

where “LSST” can be changed to any (lat,lon) between +-52 degrees lat, each time we establish ground contact with ORCASat (about once per day). We plan to initially change the selected source-on ground site to the Victoria area, and attempt to observe ORCASat from both the DAO and the UVic campus observatory within the first week of ORCASat operation (clear skies permitting). Assuming success, we then intend to change the nominal ORCASat source-on overfly site to be Pan-STARRS on Maui, until the Rubin Observatory in Chile is operational; however again, ORCASat should be able to provide occasional photometric calibration at 660 nm and 840 nm for other observatories worldwide as well. We will, of course, make ORCASat’s onboard photodiode data, with its precision calibration of ORCASat’s optical output (carefully calibrated at NRC’s Montreal Rd. campus in Ottawa, as described in https://www.orcasat.ca/updates/payload-calibration ), available publicly.

The launch of CRS-26, with ORCASat aboard, scheduled at 2204 UTC on Sat. Nov. 19, will be live-streamed on all three of the NASA-Live, SpaceX, and SpaceflightNow Youtube channels (please take your pick of any of those):

https://www.youtube.com/c/NASA
https://www.youtube.com/c/SpaceX
https://www.youtube.com/c/SpaceflightNowVideo

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