VesselSat-2 (aka Orbcomm FM43, V2) was a
Luxembourg
Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...
ian
microsatellite built and owned by
LuxSpace, and operated by
Orbcomm
''ORBCOMM'' is an American company that offers industrial Internet of things (IoT) and machine to machine (M2M) communications hardware, software and services designed to track, monitor, and control fixed and mobile assets in markets including ...
under lease. It carried a receiver for
Automatic Identification System signals, used to track ships at sea. VesselSat-2 was the second of two VesselSat spacecraft (see
VesselSat-1
VesselSat-1 (Orbcomm FM42, V1) was a miniaturized satellite built and owned by LuxSpace, which was operated by Orbcomm under lease. VesselSat-1 and its sister satellite, VesselSat-2 were used by Orbcomm to compensate the functionality of the malf ...
), which were built by LuxSpace for Orbcomm, as replacements for the AIS capabilities of the failed
Orbcomm-QL spacecraft.
VesselSat-2 was launched as a secondary payload on a
Long March 4B
The Long March 4B (), also known as the Chang Zheng 4B, CZ-4B and LM-4B is a Chinese expendable orbital Launch vehicle. Launched from Launch Complex 1 at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, it is a 3-stage launch vehicle, used mostly to place ...
carrier rocket which was carrying
Ziyuan 3
Ziyuan 3-01 or ZY 3-01 ( meaning ''Resources 3'') is a Chinese Earth observation satellite launched in January 2012. It is a high-resolution imaging satellite operated by the Ministry of Land and Resources of the People's Republic of China.
Sp ...
. The launch occurred at 03:17 UTC on 9 January 2012,
from
Launch Complex 9 at the
Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre, and was the first orbital launch of
the year.
References
External links
* https://www.webcitation.org/67w6DpNgB?url=http://luxspace.lu/index.php/News/items/the-second-luxembourg-built-satellite-vesselsat2-launched-successfully.html
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bbWD5zbYAk
Spacecraft launched in 2012
{{Luxembourg-spacecraft-stub