Operation Results and Mission Evaluation of ITF-2, Nano-Satellite of University of Tsukuba YUI Project

Abstract

ITF-2 is the second CubeSat developed by University of Tsukuba YUI project. It took over ITF-1's missions (building of a global YUI network, demonstrative experiment of an ultra-small antenna originally developed and a new microcontroller) and its system was designed based on ITF-1. The operation of ITF-2 started right after its release from the Japanese Experiment Module named Kibo attached to the International Space Station on January 16, 2017 and continued until its atmospheric re-entry on January 5, 2019. The Tsukuba ground station conducted more than 1000 operations over one and a half year and acquired considerable data. In addition, we received over 2100 signal reception reports from over 20 countries. In this study, we analyze the data accumulated throughout the operation and evaluate the missions.