Catarina Spacecraft - Nanosats Database

Satellite	Catarina-A1
Form factor	CubeSat
Units or mass	2U
Organisation	Federal University of Santa Catarina
Institution	University
Entity	Academic / Education
Headquarters	Brazil
Oneliner	Educational and amateur radio mission. Validate the functioning of the EDC (Environmental Data Collector) module.
Description	CATARINA A1 will have the following missions: An educational mission where students will be involved with the design and operation of a cubesat system in a space environment. Students will also learn about radio communications, digital communications, radio electronics, antennas, digital communications. An amateur radio mission will be implemented where the satellite functions as a digital store-and-forward repeater where digital frames will be stored and be relayed by the satellite. The amateur mission will have global coverage and will be accessible to any radio amateur. All students involved with the satellite operations will be required to have an amateur radio license. The CATARINA A1 non amateur mission is an initiative of students and researchers from the Space Technologies Research Laboratory (SpaceLab) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, with the first objective of validating the functioning of the EDC (Environmental Data Collector) module, developed by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). This payload was developed for CubeSats of 1U size or larger, with the function of receiving signals transmitted by platforms belonging to the Global Open collecting Data System (GOLDS). CATARINA A1 will downlink telemetry in NGHam format on 468 MHz. The payload will use the 401 MHz frequency. The received data is forwarded to the ground segment through the main communication link offered by the satellite service module. A scientific contribution of the mission is the evaluation of radiation effects on electronic devices, as both EDC and the service platform are based on COTS. The radiation effects evaluation will be performed by the Radiation instrument, which has also been developed for the FloripaSat-1 mission. The amateur community will be able to interact with the satellite using the experiment developed with LABRE / AMSAT-BR. The experiment enables amateurs around the world to exchange text messages through the CATARINA A1 satellite. The operations will be carried out by students duly licensed to operate in the amateur radio service. CATARINA A1 mission provides free software to access the data from the satellite as the radio amateur experiment and telemetry data. The Catarina Constellation encompasses a set of satellites with the goal to provide services, mainly, to the civil defence, contributing to the country’s sustainable socioeconomic development agenda.
Sources	[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Photo sources	[1]

Related Spacecraft

Spacecraft	Status	Launcher	Launch date	Orbit
Catarina-A1	not launched	not launched	2027-12-30	not launched
Catarina-A2	not launched	not launched	2027-12-30	not launched

Last modified: 2025-12-23