UoSAT-2

The satellite carries a Digitalker speech synthesiser,[5][6] magnetometers, a CCD camera, a Geiger-Müller tube, and a microphone to detect the vibrations of micrometeoroid impacts.

[10] A commercial fixed-frequency receiver, Astrid, was also produced by British firm MM Microwave[11] for the education market, with accompanying BBC Micro software to display raw telemetry frames.

According to a February 2008 status report the satellite had no viable battery backup, operating only from its solar panels, and a watchdog timer on board was suspending activity for up to three weeks following any power anomaly.

[12] After a 21-month gap in observations, UoSAT-2 resumed sending telemetry sometime before 10 December 2009, and is apparently continuing the watchdog-controlled transmission regime, though now on a ten-days-on, ten-days-off schedule.

The position of the skiers' emergency beacon was calculated daily by Cospas-Sarsat ground stations and relayed to them, and thousands of amateur radio listeners, as a spoken message from the Digitalker on board UoSAT-2.