REAL · Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss · MSU SSEL · NASA · APL · Dartmouth · BU
SSEL · REAL Montana State
Telemetry Database Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss
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Mission Overview

Live telemetry from the ongoing REAL CubeSat mission (Montana State University / SSEL), which studies the high-energy electrons precipitating out of Earth's Van Allen radiation belts.

Mission status

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🛰️ Live track ↗

Live Beacons

HEALTH and TIME beacons from SatNOGS and MSU InfluxDB on the same plots. Choose visible sources and marker shapes in Settings.

Backorbit LDT

Stored HEALTH and XACT telemetry from SatNOGS, MSU .dat and MSU InfluxDB.

Orbit Replay

Replay spacecraft position and attitude from XACT telemetry.

Data Explorer

Search and browse any loaded data table — including the raw SatNOGS archive and rejected packets. Filter by date, keyword, station, or frame quality. Download what you see.

About REAL

REAL mission crest

REAL — Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss

A 3U CubeSat built at the Montana State University Space Science and Engineering Laboratory (SSEL) to measure how high-energy "killer electrons" from the Van Allen radiation belts precipitate into Earth's upper atmosphere. REAL carries the Energetic Charged Particle (ECP) sensor from Johns Hopkins APL and resolves electron flux across five pitch angles simultaneously from keV to MeV energies.

Partners & collaborators

Further reading

    Data & sync

    Use Reload Files to check for updated data.

    What this site is

    A telemetry dashboard for the MSU SSEL REAL CubeSat mission (Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss).

    Live Beacons

    HEALTH and TIME beacon frames decoded in real time from SatNOGS observations and direct MSU ground-station passes. HEALTH frames carry battery / EPS / OBC / temperature / radio fields. TIME frames carry onboard clock / TAI / GPS-time fields.

    Backorbit LDT

    Higher-fidelity HEALTH and XACT frames stored onboard between passes and downlinked as backorbit telemetry. HEALTH plots use the onboard ONBOARD_TIMESTAMP counter; XACT plots use tai_utc or the onboard MET counter (counters are placed on the time axis through the measured clock model, so their UTC is an estimate). Receive and file timestamps are never plot clocks.

    XACT

    The attitude-control / orbit subset of LDT data: ECI position + velocity, attitude quaternion, body rates, star-tracker, GPS fix, ADCS mode, momentum, sun-vector, and reaction-wheel state.

    Pass detection

    Frames separated by more than ~30 min are considered separate passes. The LDT view defaults to plotting the most recent decoded pass. You can step backwards with the pass picker, or override to a free-form date range.

    Limit bands (RL / YL / Nom / YH / RH)

    Where the bus packet layout defines safe operating limits, the chart draws them as horizontal lines:

    • RL / RH — red dashed, hard low / high limit
    • YL / YH — yellow dotted, soft warning low / high
    • Nom — green dash-dot, nominal value

    Limits come straight from the REAL bus packet layout — the same field definitions the decode pipeline uses.

    Two capture pipelines, one merged LDT product

    The merged LDT product combines two sources:

    • The SatNOGS pipeline decodes frames heard by the public SatNOGS ground-station network.
    • The MSU .dat parser decodes raw captures from the MSU groundstation.

    Because both hear the same satellite, the same frame is often captured twice. The unified LDT product de-duplicates byte-identical frames and keeps every unique one, tagging each row with where it came from (source_pipeline = SatNOGS, MSU .dat, or both) plus a redundancy_status cross-check. Rejected packets are listed separately for each source.

    Report a bug or send feedback to [email protected].

    Settings

    Display preferences are saved in this browser.

    Appearance

    Theme
    Light is the default. Your choice is remembered in this browser.
    Side navigation
    Hide the left navigation when you want more width for plots.

    Orbit Replay

    Scene preferences
    Scene guides
    Choose which guides appear in Orbit Replay.
    Graphics
    Earth, clouds and night lights are static reference imagery, not observations at the replayed time. Spacecraft and orbit sizes are exaggerated for legibility. Economy uses a lower resolution and omits clouds. Night lights: NASA Earth Observatory Black Marble 2016. Clouds: NASA Visible Earth Blue Marble. Day map: NASA Blue Marble.

    Chart defaults

    How plots are drawn
    Visible reception pipelines
    Choose data sources for Live and LDT plots and tables. MSU .dat applies to LDT only.
    Layout
    Stacked shows one plot per field. Overlay groups fields with matching units.
    Plot style
    Scatter shows individual samples. Line connects samples and breaks across data gaps.
    Time display
    Show onboard clocks as raw counters or estimated UTC (≈). Click an onboard time cell to cycle through raw counter, estimated UTC and elapsed time. Time zone applies to ground timestamps, chart axes and tooltips.
    Frame quality
    Include incomplete frames and fields with quality warnings. Recovered frames remain marked partial. Frames without the selected clock remain in unfiltered tables and exports; UTC date filters require that clock. The toggle above each plot affects plots only.
    Plot size
    Taller subplots make dots and gridlines easier to read.
    Text & markers
    Adjust text size, marker appearance and line width.
    Circles mark SatNOGS; diamonds mark MSU .dat and InfluxDB by default. Reception overlap details appear in Data Explorer and All fields tables. Counter conflicts are labeled separately.

    Pass detection & performance

    Advanced
    Grouping & sampling
    A “pass” is one contiguous stretch of telemetry: live beacons group on ground receive time, backorbit LDT groups on the onboard data clock. A quiet gap longer than these minutes starts a new pass. “Chart points” caps how many samples each series draws so big ranges stay smooth.

    Dashboard

    Overview clock & pinned items
    Current UTC time
    A small reference clock shown next to the “time since last beacon” chips.
    Hidden sections
    Overview sections hidden through the dashboard’s ⚙ Customize menu.
    Pinned values
    Pin any field as a card showing its most recent value.
    Loading available fields…
    Pinned plots
    Pin any field as a mini time-series chart (Ctrl/⌘-scroll or pinch to zoom; drag or swipe to scrub). Charts appear beneath the Overview cards.
    Loading available fields…

    Table columns

    Explorer & data tables
    Rows per page
    Default page size for every data table (each table’s own selector still overrides it).
    Hidden fields
    Globally hide noisy columns from every table. Applies on top of each table’s own Columns menu.
    Loading available fields…
    Default (“Minimal”) columns
    Up to 10 columns shown by the Minimal option in each table’s Columns menu, chosen per telemetry type.
    HEALTH
    Loading HEALTH fields...
    TIME
    Loading TIME fields...
    XACT
    Loading XACT fields...