Quick – Send a message into orbit

Every fancied the idea of space travel? Well, if you’re very quick, this is your chance to get your name and short message sent into space. Your message could be orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes, thanks to a team in Vietnam.

In July this year, a small 1 kilogram satellite, called F-1 Cubesat, will be launched into orbit via the International Space Station, and the satellite will contain a microSD card crammed with messages from the public.

The team at F-Space Laboratory have put this tiny satellite together and the plan is for the CubeSat to go to Japan at the end of June to be launched on the 21st of July 2012, to link up with the International Space Station. Assuming all goes well, it will be deployed and orbit the Earth for as long as it can before burning up on re-entry.

Amateur Radio operators (including our Pete) will be able to track the progress of the satellite from the two Yaesu amateur radio transceivers inside the cube, and it’s hoped that an audio beacon, plus webcam images and telemetry can be downloaded by hams across the globe to monitor the progress of this tiny orbiting piece of history.

If you fancy getting your name into space, go to fspace.edu.vn/ and enter your name and a short message. If there’s still space on the space-bound microSD card, you’ll get a certificate that proves you’re part of history! Here’s our certificate:

We’ll be covering the progress of F-1 Cubesat in the next couple of podcasts, so we’d urge listeners to be part of this rather unusual opportunity to fly in space, and get your name on board quickly.

FrequencyCast… Boldly going where no podcast has gone before…