BeeSat 5-8 [TU Berlin]
Official name BEESAT-6
Alternative name BeeSat 6
Cospar ID 2021-022AB
Norad ID 47957
Launch date 2021-03-22
Launch site TTMTR
Launch vehicle Soyuz-2-1a Fregat
Country/Organization Germany
Type application Technology
Operator TU Berlin
RCS size SMALL
Decay date ON ORBIT
Period (min) 92.63
Inclination (deg) 97.44
Perigee (km) 400
Apogee (km) 407
Eccentricity 0.00867410161090459
Mean motion (revs. per day) 15.5457195293102
Semi-Major axis (km) 6781.635
Raan (deg) 37.9004
Arg of perigee (deg) 189.0997
Shape Box
Mass (kg) 0.3
Height (m) 0.025
Width (m) 0.1
Depth (m) 0.1
Span (m^2) 0.1
Contractors TU Berlin
Propulsion None
Configuration CubeSat (0.25U)
Power Solar cells, batteries

BeeSat 5 to 8 (Berlin Experimental and Educational Satellite) is a pico satellite constellation project of the Technical University of Berlin for further development and verification of miniaturized components for distributed pico- and nanosatellite systems in the framework of the PiNaSys II program.

Essential functions of a distributed system are the communication and the relative navigation among the satellites. At TU Berlin a picosatellite swarm mission is developed consisting of the four 0.25U CubeSats BEESAT-5 to BEESAT-8 with a mass of 330 grams each. The picosatellites were designed fully redundant and almost complete single-fault tolerant.

The primary mission objective is to demonstrate a newly developed communications subsystem in the UHF band and an experimental GNSS receiver. Furthermore, the satellites contain a multifunction optical attitude determination sensor and are equipped with corner cube reflectors on all sides for laser ranging from ground.

There are two indentical sets of each four satellites: BeeSat 5 to 8 and BeeSat 10 to 13.

The four satellites fit together in a 1U CubeSat form factor space. Four satellites were originally to be launched on Spaceflight Industry's SSO-A multi-satellite launch on a Falcon-9 v1.2 (Block 5) rocket, but missed the launch opportunity. BeeSat 10 to 13 were launched on an Soyuz launch in July 2019. BeeSat 5 to 8 are to follow later in 2019.

Satellite COSPAR Date LS Launch Vehicle Remarks
BEESAT-6 2021-022AB 2021-03-22 TTMTR Soyuz-2-1a Fregat with CAS500 1, ELSA-d Servicer, ELSA-d Client, GRUS 1B, ..., 1E, Najm 1, DMSat 1, UniSat 7, BCCSAT 1, FEES, DIY 1, SMOG 1, STECCO, SAMSON 1, 2, 3, Kepler 6, 7, NanoSatC-Br 2, KMSL, CANYVAL-C 1, 2, BeeSat 5, 7, 8, Hiber 3, CubeSX-HSE, CubeSX-Sirius-HSE, Orbicraft-Zorkiy, WildTrackCube-SIMBA, GRBAlpha, 3B5GSAT, LacunaSat 2b, ChallengeOne, KSU-Cubesat
BEESAT-5 2021-022AM 2021-03-22 TTMTR Soyuz-2-1a Fregat with CAS500 1, ELSA-d Servicer, ELSA-d Client, GRUS 1B, ..., 1E, Najm 1, DMSat 1, UniSat 7, BCCSAT 1, FEES, DIY 1, SMOG 1, STECCO, SAMSON 1, 2, 3, Kepler 6, 7, NanoSatC-Br 2, KMSL, CANYVAL-C 1, 2, BeeSat 6, 7, 8, Hiber 3, CubeSX-HSE, CubeSX-Sirius-HSE, Orbicraft-Zorkiy, WildTrackCube-SIMBA, GRBAlpha, 3B5GSAT, LacunaSat 2b, ChallengeOne, KSU-Cubesat
BEESAT-7 2021-022AN 2021-03-22 TTMTR Soyuz-2-1a Fregat with CAS500 1, ELSA-d Servicer, ELSA-d Client, GRUS 1B, ..., 1E, Najm 1, DMSat 1, UniSat 7, BCCSAT 1, FEES, DIY 1, SMOG 1, STECCO, SAMSON 1, 2, 3, Kepler 6, 7, NanoSatC-Br 2, KMSL, CANYVAL-C 1, 2, BeeSat 5, 6, 8, Hiber 3, CubeSX-HSE, CubeSX-Sirius-HSE, Orbicraft-Zorkiy, WildTrackCube-SIMBA, GRBAlpha, 3B5GSAT, LacunaSat 2b, ChallengeOne, KSU-Cubesat
BEESAT-8 2021-022AP 2021-03-22 TTMTR Soyuz-2-1a Fregat with CAS500 1, ELSA-d Servicer, ELSA-d Client, GRUS 1B, ..., 1E, Najm 1, DMSat 1, UniSat 7, BCCSAT 1, FEES, DIY 1, SMOG 1, STECCO, SAMSON 1, 2, 3, Kepler 6, 7, NanoSatC-Br 2, KMSL, CANYVAL-C 1, 2, BeeSat 5, 6, 7, Hiber 3, CubeSX-HSE, CubeSX-Sirius-HSE, Orbicraft-Zorkiy, WildTrackCube-SIMBA, GRBAlpha, 3B5GSAT, LacunaSat 2b, ChallengeOne, KSU-Cubesat