Maya-5 and Maya-6 re-enters atmosphere, ends mission
Almost half a year after their launch to space, Maya-5 and Maya-6 re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on 9 December 2023 and 6 December 2023 respectively, ending their missions. Maya-5 and Maya-6 are the second set of Philippine university-built CubeSats, developed by the second batch of STeP-UP scholars. The project aims to gain and locally extend the knowledge and skills on satellite development acquired from foreign schooling and utilize the domestic capabilities for satellite development. The two cube satellites share the same bus but differ in mission payload. Maya-5 has the same mission payload as that of the Maya-2, and Maya-6 has the experimental on-board computer (OBC-EX) mission payload, which controls the attitude determination and control system (ADCS) and hentenna (HNT) missions.
The Maya-5 and Maya-6 CubeSats were built under the Space Science and Technology Proliferation through University Partnerships (STeP-UP) project of the STAMINA4Space Program, which is funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) and is implemented by the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) and the DOST Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI). The nanosatellite track under the Master of Science (MS) or Master of Engineering (MEng) program of the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute (EEEI) of UPD is also implemented in collaboration with the Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) in Japan and with scholarship support from DOST-Science Education Institute (DOST-SEI).
The completed Maya-5 and Maya-6 Flight Models (FM).
Maya-5 and Maya-6 are 1U (10 x 10 x 10 cm) CubeSats weighing ~1.15 kilograms each.
Photo courtesy of the STeP-UP/STAMINA4Space
The Philippines’ next batch of locally developed cube satellites (CubeSats) Maya-5 and Maya-6 were successfully launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on 05 June 2023 at around 11:47 PM PST. Maya-5 and Maya-6 are aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 as part of SpaceX’s 28th commercial resupply mission. The CubeSats, weighing approximately 1.15 kilograms each, moved along an orbit similar to the space station’s at an altitude of approximately 400 kilometers once they were released to space.
The next nanosatellite, Maya-7, is a 2U CubeSat currently being developed through the Philippine Space Agency(PhilSA)’s Advancing Core Competencies and Expertise in Space Studies Nanosat Project (ACCESS Nanosat) Project. ACCESS Nanosat kicked off in September 2022 and provides the opportunity for Filipinos to pursue a master’s degree with specialized courses in satellite engineering at the EEEI. In this project, a team of select students and researchers are in the process of designing and developing the Maya-7 CubeSat. More details about ACCESS here: https://philsa.gov.ph/access-nanosat/
