Following the launch of the Diwata-1 microsatellite in 2016, the Philippine Department of Science and Technology (DOST) announced on 29 June 2017 that two satellites, one nanosatellite and one microsatellite, will be launched in 2018. The government agency said that Filipino graduate students, Joven Javier and Adrian Salces attending Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT), Japan were working on developing a satellite with their mentors which at that time was still to be named.[1]
The satellite, later dubbed as Maya-1, was developed mainly through the second Joint Global Multination Birds Satellite (Birds-2) initiated by the Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT) in Japan.[2] The project was managed by a team composed of 11 graduate students from Bhutan, Japan, Malaysia, and the Philippines.[3] The two other satellites developed under Birds-2; BHUTAN-1 of Bhutan and UiTMSAT-1 of Malaysia. The first iteration of the project (Birds-1) was a joint effort by Bangladesh, Ghana, Japan, Mongolia, and Nigeria.[4]
The project was also placed under the Philippine Scientific Earth Observation Microsatellite program.[2] The PHL-Microsat team suggested the satellite to be named after the Maya, a local term for a certain varieties of bird in the Philippines.[4] The Maya-1 satellite and its successors are specifically named after the Chestnut munia (Lonchura atricapilla), which is among the bird species locally referred to as the maya, due to its similar size to the satellite with the Chestnut munia known to grow around 12 centimeters (0.39 ft) long.[5][6]
Development
The Birds-2 project commenced in November 2016.[7] Maya-1 was designed by PHL-Microsat scholars and KIT graduate students Joven Javier and Adrian Salces. Javier was pursuing a master's degree while Salces was pursuing a doctorate degree.[8]
The satellite was classified as a 1U CubeSat.[7] It measured 10 × 10 × 11.35 cm and weighed 1.11 kilograms (2.4 lb).[10] Maya-1 took fifteen months to build.[2]
While built solely by Filipinos, the satellite was jointly controlled and operated by the Philippines, Bhutan, and Malaysia. The combined cost to build and launch Maya-1 was around US$150,000 (₱8 million).[2] The mission of Maya-1 was "experimental testing of commercial apparatus" and due to its size, it was to provide "a cost-effective educational platform" to help Filipinos build future satellites. The satellite could also be used to relay messages in the event typhoons render cellular services unavailable.[3]
The satellite was initially projected to be operational from about six to 9 months.[12] However Maya-1 remained in orbit for two years and four months with its operations ending on November 23, 2020, when it re-entered Earth's atmosphere.[13]
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).