by Charissa Luci-Atienza, Manila Bulletin
This afternoon’s release of Maya-2, the country’s fourth satellite and second nanosatellite. to space from the International Space Station (ISS) will be delayed for more than one hour, the Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) said Sunday, March 14.
“The release of Maya-2 will be delayed, the schedule has been adjusted to 6:50 p.m.,” DOST-ASTI Chief Science Research Specialist Alvin Retamar told the Manila Bulletin in a Viber message.
He said the reasons for the delay were not cited.
It was earlier announced that Maya-2, along with two other cube satellites–Japan’s Tsuru and Paraguay’s GuaraniSat-1–under the fourth Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite project or BIRDS-4 Project, was set to be deployed into orbit from the ISS on Sunday, March 14, at 5:25 p.m.
In a Facebook post, STAMINA4Space said the “program will start at 6:50 p.m. (Phillippine Time) instead of the originally announced 5:25 p.m.”
BIRDS-4 Project is a global small satellite development project under a strategic partnership pact between the Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) and the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA).
On Feb. 21, 2021 at 1:36 a.m. (local time), the 1.3 kilogram-cube satellite was successfully launched into space aboard the S.S. Katherine Johnson Cygnus spacecraft. The 1.3 kilogram-cube satellite was successfully launched together with the nanosatellites of Japan and Paraguay at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Station in Virginia, United States and was eventually launched to the ISS on Feb. 22.
The 1.3-kilogram Maya-2 is a technology demonstration and educational platform geared to collect data remotely by Store-and-Forward (S&F) Mechanism.
Aboard the satellite is a camera for image and video capture, an Automatic Packet Reporting System Message Digipeater (APRS-DP), attitude determination and control units for active attitude stabilization and control demonstrations, Perovskite solar cells and Latchup-detection chip.
The development of Maya-2 started in 2018.
Maya-2 was developed by three Department of Science and Technology (DOST) scholars while pursuing their doctoral degree programs in Space Engineering in Kyutech in Japan. They are Engineers Izrael Zenar “IZ” Bautista, the BIRDS-4 project manager; Marloun Sejera, and Mark Angelo Purio.
