Guatemala’s first satellite, a CubeSat called Quetzal-1, was deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) on April 28. Its primary mission is to test a sensor for remote data acquisition for natural resource management, which could be used to monitor water quality in inland water bodies.

The satellite is part of the Japanese Kibo CubeSat program, a product of the cooperation between, among others, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG), and other institutions.

The satellite’s telemetry (4,8k GMSK) downlink is 437.200 MHz. The Quetzal-1 project team director is Guatemalan engineer José Bagur, TG8JAV, a graduate of the Universidad Del Valle. — Thanks to IARU Region 2