Sapling Magnifica Spacecraft - Nanosats Database

Satellite	Sapling Magnifica
Spacecraft type	CubeSat
Units or mass	1U
Status	not launched, expected in 2026
Launcher	not launched
Organization	Stanford University
Institution	University
Entity	Academic / Education
Nation	US
Oneliner	Technology demonstration mission aimed to prove several key technologies necessary for SSI's satellites to host scientific payloads in the future.
Description	Sapling Magnifica is a technology demonstration mission aimed to prove several key technologies necessary for SSI's satellites to host scientific payloads in the future. These include a magnetorquer-based ADCS, a higher quality camera than on previous Sapling missions, and reaction wheels. The satellite will be either a 1U or a 2U spacecraft, depending on proposal selection. The Sapling Magnifica is an amateur mission. This project is entirely undergraduate student initiated and developed. Additionally, most of the students involved either have HAM radio licenses or are studying for HAM radio licenses. Amateur radio enthusiasts around the world will be able to participate by sending commands to the satellite and receiving images in response, and by making range measurements with the satellite and performing their own orbit determination of the satellite. In addition, we will conduct amateur research on image downlinking, comparing three different modulation techniques FSK, LoRa, and FLRC. Amateurs will be able to receive images (and if all goes well, take an image on command). Proposing downlinks on UHF and S Band using - 500K X1 DCN: high data rate telemetry transmission - 125K X1 DCN: telemetry transmission S-Band: - 1625K X1 DCN: image transmission and two way radio ranging. - 2M F1 DNN: image transmission over FSK. - 1.2M F1 DNN: image transmission over FLRC. 70cm: All telemetry and command will be over LoRa, which is a chirp spread spectrum based scheme. The data rate shall be set between 250bps and 300kbps. S-band: data downlink will be over LoRa, FSK, and FLRC. In LoRa mode, the optimal expected data rate will be 20kbps-1mbps.
Sources	[1]

Last modified: 2025-12-21