We have a date. The three CubeSats of BIRDS-2 project are scheduled to be released from the JAXA Kibo Module of ISS on August 10, 2018, 18:45 JST (UTC+9). Based on our initial calculations, the satellites are expected to be flying above Mongolia when it starts the transmission of CW Beacon signals after 30 minutes mandatory no RF period upon release from ISS.

ISS Release

Time (UTC+9)

Antenna Deploy

@ 30 mins

CW Beacon Starts

August 10

18:45

19:15

Satellite location is approaching Mongolia

19:17

All the member Ground Stations (GS) of the BIRDS Ground Station Network (GSN) will be alert during this initial signal acquisition phase. The constellation of CubeSats are expected to fly over the GSs of BIRDS GSN as indicated in the table below.