Mazaalai: learn a complete mission through international cooperation

Mazaalai was Mongolia’s CubeSat in the first BIRDS collaboration led by Kyushu Institute of Technology. Researchers from the National University of Mongolia developed the spacecraft while studying in Japan, then used ground capabilities in Mongolia to support operations. A small spacecraft thus connected graduate education, hardware development, international launch access and local technical work.

The mission did not begin and end with a rocket launch. JAXA records the five BIRDS-1 spacecraft leaving the International Space Station on 7 July 2017. Before that release, they had travelled aboard the Dragon CRS-11 cargo mission and been prepared for deployment — open definition through the Japanese module’s small-satellite deployer. Launching cargo to the station and releasing an independent satellite are distinct milestones.

A satellite’s useful information has to reach a receiver and be interpreted. The university’s ground-station research describes reception and control work associated with Mazaalai and other small satellites. This experience can remain useful after an individual spacecraft’s mission ends: antennas, procedures, software and trained operators can support later projects.

Imagine a station receives a short radio message containing a battery reading and a timestamp. That packet provides evidence about the reported state at that time. It does not prove that an image was acquired, every experiment succeeded or the spacecraft can communicate continuously. The team needs separate criteria for each objective and must preserve enough context to interpret the measurement.

Keep the mission milestones separate

A satellite in low Earth orbit moves across a ground station’s sky. Communication is limited by geometry as well as equipment, power and scheduling. In an invented planning example, a six-minute useful contact at eight hundred useful bits per second could carry 288,000 bits: six times sixty times eight hundred. This is a simplified data allowance, not Mazaalai’s measured performance.

Dividing by eight gives 36,000 bytes before any additional allowance not already included in the stated useful rate. A larger image would need compression, more contacts or a different communication plan. Interrupted reception can reduce the amount further. The lesson is to connect a science objective to the practical chain that makes it possible: build the instrument, acquire the data, store it, transmit it and interpret it on the ground.