A few months ago MaSat-1, Hungary's first satellite was launched from Guyana Space Center, South America. In this time, the satellite is successfully working on its orbit, and making beautiful images from our Earth.
The MaSat-1's history was begin in 2007, when some students from Technical University of Budapest (BME) decided that they design and build a CubeSat-classified picosatellite. The leadership of András Gschwindt, the team was begin the Project MaSat-1 (MO-72). The satellite (1.picture) named after two words: Magyar and Satellite, and the name' pronunciation is "maszat", that similar the "smudge". The satellite's shape is a cube, its sizes are 10*10*10 cm, and its mass 1 kg. This is similar that Romanian's Goliat and the Polish PWSat and other CubeSat type spacecrafts. In 31 March, 2009 the help of Charles Simonyi was tested the satellite's tracking system between Budapest and the onboard of International Space Station (ISS). The tracking system has operation in 437.345 MHz radio amateur frequency (70 cm wawelenght) and provided telemetric data as well as color images on VGA resolution.
MaSat-1 was launched on 11:00 AM (CET), 13 February, 2012 from Guyana Space Center (Kourou, French Guyana) onboard Vega launcher with some picosatellites (2.picture). The largest satellite on Vega is the Italian's LARES. The launch was successful, and the satellites went to his planned orbits, but the Czech's spacecraft was failed shortly after launch. The satellite is on 350*1450 km elliptical heliosynchronous orbit. The name "MO-72" given from William (Bill) Tynan W3XO OSCAR Number Administrator, after "Magyar" and "Orbit" words and "72" meaning that this is the No 72. radio amateur satellite. The primary tracking station is in Budapest, and the secondary tracking station is in Érd, near Budapest. Also other radio amateurs are tracking the satellite all over the world.
MaSat-1's camera has a resolution with 640*480 pixels (about 1-10 km). The first images was taken in 8 March, 2012. The 3. pictures are Southwest Africa, near Madagascar (left), Australia (middle), and Antarctica (right). MaSat-1's planned operation time is 3 mounth. Its direct successor, MaSat-2 yet isn' in operation.
