ESA’s first-of-its-kind research CubeSat, OPS-SAT, will come to an end tomorrow after almost five years in orbit. We currently expect the mission to complete its atmospheric reentry within a few hours of 16:00 UTC, 22 May 2024.

The teams behind OPS-SAT and its final experiments are working night and day to squeeze out research and development value from the mission to the very end.

Meanwhile, ESA is working with the radio amateurs around the world (in particular SatNOGS) to collect as much data as possible from OPS-SAT during its final orbits. If you are an amateur radio enthusiast, there is still time to receive radio telemetry from OPS-SAT and send it to us. In fact, it is more important now than ever as the satellite passes through the lower levels of Earth’s atmosphere! We have very little data from active satellites passing through this region and this citizen science will help us better understand what happens to small satellites during their final hours.

The OPS-SAT team has also been hard at work developing a back-end tool to process the radio telemetry from the campaign and a front-end tool to visualise the satellite’s location and latest telemetry.

Click here to follow the OPS-SAT reentry live!

The team has also created a publicity available dashboard that displays current and historic telemetry from OPS-SAT, including information on its power supply, temperature, spin rate and more. It updates automatically, so you can watch how these values evolve as the spacecraft descends lower and lower into the atmosphere.

These webpages offer a front-row seat to the reentry for as long as OPS-SAT’s main computer and UHF transmitter continue to function, and the radio amateur community continues to send us data.

At this point, control of OPS-SAT could be lost at any moment. We don’t know for sure what will happen: Will the satellite begin to spin and tumble? Will it rapidly heat up at the very end?

Find out with us!