ExseedSat-1 Amateur Radio CubeSat (VO-96)
Satellize
ExseedSat-1 (OSCAR designation VO-96 / VUsat-OSCAR 96) is India’s first privately built and operated satellite, launched December 3, 2018 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 (SSO-A rideshare mission) from Vandenberg AFB into a polar sun-synchronous orbit at approximately 600 km altitude. Built by a team of 8 scientists from Exseed Space (now Satellize) in approximately 4 […]
Key figurescomparable across the catalogue
- Mass
- 1 kg
- Power
- 2.8 W
Normalised to common units so this product can be compared with others in its category. The supplier's own wording is below.
As published by the supplier
- Form factor
- 1U CubeSat (10 × 10 × 10 cm)
- Mass
- ~1 kg
- Material
- Aluminium alloy
- Orbit
- Polar SSO, ~600 km altitude
- Launch date
- December 3, 2018
- Launch vehicle
- SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.2 Block 5 (SSO-A mission)
- OSCAR designation
- VO-96 (VUsat-OSCAR 96)
- Beacon frequency
- 145.900 MHz FM
- Payload
- UHF/VHF NBFM amateur radio transponder; APRS digipeater; CW beacon (Morse 'V' + RTTY telemetry)
- Solar power
- ~2.8 W average from solar cells
- TX power
- 0.5 W or 1 W (selectable)
- CTCSS squelch
- 67 Hz
- Estimated lifetime
- 2–5 years (battery-dependent)
- Build cost
- ~₹2 crore (~$240,000 USD)
- Build time
- ~4 months, team of 8
About
ExseedSat-1 (OSCAR designation VO-96 / VUsat-OSCAR 96) is India’s first privately built and operated satellite, launched December 3, 2018 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 (SSO-A rideshare mission) from Vandenberg AFB into a polar sun-synchronous orbit at approximately 600 km altitude. Built by a team of 8 scientists from Exseed Space (now Satellize) in approximately 4 months at a cost of roughly ₹2 crore (~$240,000 USD), the satellite is a 1U CubeSat (10 × 10 × 10 cm, ~1 kg) constructed from aluminium alloy and equipped with a multifunction UHF/VHF amateur radio transponder payload. ExseedSat-1 serves the global ham radio community by providing an FM-mode transponder, an APRS digipeater (VHF downlink on 145.900 MHz), and a CW (Morse code) beacon — transmitting ‘V’ in Morse followed by radio teletype (RTTY) telemetry every minute. Solar cells provide average 2.8 W power with selectable transmit power of 0.5 W or 1 W. ExseedSat-1 is intended to provide backup emergency communications capability when conventional terrestrial infrastructure fails. As India’s first private satellite, it demonstrated that a small team with limited resources could build and operate a functioning spacecraft — proving the commercial viability of low-cost CubeSat manufacturing in India and laying the groundwork for Satellize’s broader nanosatellite platform offering.
Documentation
No public datasheet yet — request the datasheet / ICD from the supplier.