AMSAT-UK

Metro Newspaper – The next space age: Cuberty

M5AKA — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:32:13 +0000

The May 14, 2012 edition of the Metro newspaper carried a story by Ben Gilliland on pages 26-27 about CubeSats. Among those mentioned is the UK amateur radio Android smartphone CubeSat STRaND-1 which is being built by volunteers at the Surrey Space Centre (SSC).

The online edition of the Metro newspaper can be read at http://e-edition.metro.co.uk/2012/05/14/ You will be prompted for an email address but anything that looks like an email address will keep the prompt happy and you can then read the newspaper.

Ben Gilliland’s article is also available on the CosmOnline website at
http://www.cosmonline.co.uk/blog/2012/05/14/next-space-age-cuberty

You can read about STRaND-1 in the AMSAT-UK publication OSCAR News here

STRaND-1 on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/nanosats

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Student’s Project Could Go Into Space

M5AKA — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:27:15 +0000

Go Erie reports on the work of students from Penn State Behrend who have been building part of a satellite for AMSAT.

The report says:

The trio speaks the language of supercapacitors and charges cycles, and they offer informed views on how circuit boards can shed excess heat.

When David Jesberger, Kathleen Nicholas and Jacob Sherk graduated May 4 from Penn State Behrend, they left speaking the language of engineers. But they also left behind a finished senior project that could soon be headed into outer space.

Senior engineering students at Behrend pitch ideas each year for projects they would like to tackle in their final year. Nicholas said she, Jesberger and Sherk all bid for a chance to be part of a project for the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT).

The super-capacitor based energy storage device developed by the students is designed to replace the silver–zinc battery on ARISSat type satellites.

Read the full story by Jim Martin at
http://www.goerie.com/article/20120512/NEWS02/305129968/Behrend-engineers%27-project-could-go-into-space

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Aalto-1 Mission Animation

M5AKA — Sat, 12 May 2012 14:18:24 +0000

Finnish students working on the Aalto-1 CubeSat

Students working on the Aalto-1 CubeSat have released two new videos. In the first video Systems Engineer Antti Kestilä gives a brief introduction to the amateur radio VHF/UHF ground station on the roof of ELEC building at Aalto University Otaniemi campus.

The second video is an animation showing most of the Aalto-1 mission phases.

Aalto-1 is a student satellite project of Aalto University, Finland. When launched, it will be Finland’s first satellite. It is planned to operate at VHF-UHF and there will also be an S-band transmitter. Up to 8 watts of power will be available from the solar panels.

The main payload of the satellite is a novel tiny Fabry-Perot imaging spectrometer, developed by VTT, Finland. The primary scientific goal of the mission is to demonstrate the feasibility of MEMS Fabry-Perot spectrometers for space applications. This miniature technology can be used in nanosatellites for large a variety of remote sensing applications in the future.

High spectral resolution images can be used for water quality monitoring and land use classification.

Watch Aalto-1 // Quick Look on Ground Station

Watch Aalto-1 // Mission Loop for MoA

Aalto-1 on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Aalto-1/122101441174192

Aalto-1 Discussion Forum https://wiki.aalto.fi/display/SatForum/Aalto-1+Discussion+Forum

Aalto-1 https://wiki.aalto.fi/display/SuomiSAT/Summary

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How a Pocket-Size Satellite Could Find Another Earth

M5AKA — Sat, 12 May 2012 11:06:47 +0000

Radio Amateur Sara Seager KB1WTW - Image Credit PlanetQuest

Time Magazine reports that unlike the massive NASA Kepler probe the next mission to search for new planets will be a tiny CubeSat called ExoplanetSat.

Sara Seager KB1WTW with model of ExoplanetSat - Image Credit MIT

Time says: What makes ExoplanetSat even more un-NASA-like is that it began as a class project — although admittedly, the class was at MIT. It was a design-and-build course, which the university’s engineering students have to take in order to graduate. In a recent semester, the class was co-taught by Sara Seager [KB1WTW] an astrophysicist who has done groundbreaking research studying how the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars might look like from earthly telescopes. Seager recruited five science undergrads to join her engineers, on the theory that out in the real world, they’d eventually have to work with engineers anyway.

The group lead by Sara KB1WTW is developing a prototype ExoplanetSat capable of monitoring a single, bright, sun-like star for two years. Planned to launch late 2012 or 2013 it is hoped it will open the gates for ExoplanetSat interest and funding. Once the funding doors are opened, then the fleet of ExoplanetSats can be launched. The fleet may contain as many as a hundred of these small satellites, each focused on its own star.

In a 2011 visit to Cambridge, UK, Sara said “The reason why we’re excited is because we think that this is a really huge thing. Hundreds and thousands of years from now, people will look back and ask, what are the significant accomplishments of our society in the early twenty-first century? One of them will be that we were the first to discover other worlds and other worlds that might be like Earth. When you think back four hundred years, what do you remember? You think about Christopher Columbus and Lewis and Clark. It’s the exploration—finding things that were new to our culture. And that’s why we’re excited.”

Read the Times Magazine article at http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2114158,00.html

MIT paper on ExoplanetSat http://dspace.mit.edu/openaccess-disseminate/1721.1/61644

Presentation Slides http://mstl.atl.calpoly.edu/~bklofas/Presentations/DevelopersWorkshop2011/5_Smith_ExoplanetSat.pdf

PlanetQuest http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/

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Hackers In Space: Hackerspace Global Grid Interview

M5AKA — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:28:25 +0000

An interview given to Tom Nardi by Gregor Jehle (Hadez) of the Stuttgart Hackerspace was recently published on The Powerbase site.

In the interview Hadez discusses his ideas for distributed satellite ground station network and the creation of a Hackerspace Global Grid.

Read The Powerbase interview at
http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/02/hackers-in-space-hackerspace-global-grid-interview/

Hackerspace Global Grid on Twitter
https://twitter.com/hxglobalgrid

Hadez took part in a presentation to the Chaos Computer Camp 2011 that can be seen at
http://www.uk.amsat.org/3892

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Vote For Your Favorite Space App

M5AKA — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:45:12 +0000

Global voting started yesterday, May 9, for the International Space Apps Challenge! The Space Apps Challenge fosters innovation by providing a platform for citizens from around the world to work together to solve current challenges relevant to both space exploration and social need. The Innovation Endeavors and Talenthouse community of investors, entrepreneurs and advisors are here to support and celebrate these teams and their innovations to the fifty challenges – and invite you to vote for your favorite App. The final winners will be determined with your votes and along with an internationally recognized jury of investors and entrepreneurs from Innovation Endeavors.

Among the many Apps is one that visualizes near-real time aurora data, a solution to visualize Kepler data, such as changing star intensity, using an Arduino and a prototype web app aimed at school children that makes the Kepler exoplanet data more accessible by displayingﾠit in a visual and fun way, making comparisons with each planetﾠto our own.

Voting closes May 15, see the contenders and cast your vote at
http://open.nasa.gov/blog/2012/05/09/spaceapps-global-judging-open-now/

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Three More Radio Hams Venture to ISS Next Week

M5AKA — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:43:39 +0000

The six radio hams comprising the ISS Expedition 31 crew. In the front row are Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko RN3DX (right), commander; and Gennady Padalka RN3DT, flight engineer. Pictured from the left (back row) are NASA astronaut Joe Acaba KE5DAR, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Revin RN3BS, European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers PI9ISS and NASA astronaut Don Pettit KD5MDT, all flight engineers. Photo credit: NASA

The ARRL report that NASA will televise the launch and docking of the next mission, carrying three radio amateurs to the International Space Station (ISS), scheduled for May 14.

NASA Flight Engineer Joseph Acaba, KE5DAR, and his two Russian crewmates, Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka, RN3DT, and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin, RN3BS, are completing their training as they undergo Soyuz spacecraft fit.

Live NASA TV coverage of the Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan begins at 9 PM CDT on Monday, May 14 (0200 UTC May 15), with the launch scheduled for 10:01 PM CDT (0301 UTC).

The trio will arrive at the station May 16, joining Expedition 31 Commander Oleg Kononenko, RN3DX, of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Flight Engineer Don Pettit, KD5MDT, of NASA and Flight Engineer Andrei Kuipers, PI9ISS, of the European Space Agency, who have been aboard the ISS since December 2011. Padalka, Acaba and Revin will transition to the Expedition 32 crew in July and return to Earth in mid-September.

For NASA TV’s scheduled coverage see the full ARRL story at http://www.arrl.org/news/three-hams-venture-to-iss-next-week

You can watch NASA TV online at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Listening to the International Space Station http://www.uk.amsat.org/3491

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2012 AMSAT Forum at Dayton – Saturday May 19

M0TFO — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:44:42 +0000


The AMSAT Forum at the 2012 Dayton Hamvention will be on Saturday
morning May 19 from 11:15 to 13:30 in Forum Room 5. The moderator
will be Alan Biddle, WA4SCA

The speakers will be:

Barry Baines, WD4ASW;  AMSAT Status Report
------------------------------------------
Barry, AMSAT President, will highlight recent activities within
AMSAT, and discuss some of the challenges and accomplishments
of the organization.

Mark Hammond, N8MH;  AMSAT Educational Relationships
----------------------------------------------------
Mark, AMSAT VP of Educational Relationships, will discuss his
education activities.

Gould Smith, WA4SXM;  ARISSat-1 Operation in Space
--------------------------------------------------
Gould, AMSAT Project Manager for ARISSat-1, will talk about its
operation aboard the ISS, the  deployment and operations this past
fall and winter.

Tony Monteiro, AA2TX;  Project Fox - AMSAT's First CubeSat
----------------------------------------------------------
Tony, AMSAT Engineering VP, will discuss the design and status
of Project-FOX.

Howard Long, G6LVB; "FUN in Space for All!"
-------------------------------------------
Howard, AMSAT-UK Committee, will discuss the FUNcube project
which will enable amateurs and students to have FUN in space.
For amateurs, the spacecraft will carry conventional UHF to VHF
linear transponders. For students of all ages, the same space-
craft will provide strong telemetry transmissions which they can
easily receive at schools in support of science, technology,
engineering, and math subjects (STEM). 

[ANS thanks Gould Smith, WA4SXM and Alan Biddle, WA4SCA for the
 above information]

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COM DEV equipment launched on US Air Force AEHF-2 satellite

M0TFO — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:22:09 +0000

CAMBRIDGE, ON, May 9, 2012 /CNW/ – COM DEV International Ltd. (CDV.TO), a leading manufacturer of space hardware subsystems, today announced that the AEHF-2 satellite has been successfully launched with COM DEV-built switches, filters and other microwave components on board. The satellite was launched May 4 ^th from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard an Atlas V rocket.

AEHF-2 is the second of four planned “Advanced Extremely High Frequency” satellites being built for the U.S. Air Force. AEHF is the next-generation military strategic and tactical relay system. It will provide survivable, global, secure, protected, and jam-resistant communications for high-priority military ground, sea and air assets. The AEHF constellation will also serve international partners including Canada , the Netherlands and the United Kingdom .

“AEHF is one of the most technologically advanced satellite programs in the world,” said Michael Pley, CEO of COM DEV. “It’s a great example of how space technology can be used to help ensure greater security for all of us. We are pleased to be able to contribute, with multiple COM DEV divisions providing equipment for this satellite.”

A single AEHF satellite provides greater total capacity than the entire five-satellite Milstar constellation currently on-orbit.

Lockheed Martin is the AEHF prime contractor, space and ground segments provider as well as system integrator, and Northrop Grumman is the payload provider. COM DEV has been involved in the program since 2002, and is supplying equipment for all four satellites. The program has begun advanced procurement of long-lead components for the fifth and sixth AEHF satellites.

About COM DEV

COM DEV International Ltd. (www.comdevintl.com) is a leading global provider of space hardware and services. With facilities in Canada , the United Kingdom and the United States , COM DEV manufactures advanced subsystems and microsatellites that are sold to major satellite prime contractors, government agencies and satellite operators, for use in communications, space science, remote sensing and defense applications. COM DEV’s majority-owned subsidiary, exactEarth Ltd., provides satellite data services.

This news release may contain certain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from results indicated in any forward-looking statements. The Company cautions that, among other things, in view of the rapid changes in communications markets and technologies, and other risks including the cost and market acceptance of the Company’s new products, the level of individual customer procurements and competitive product offerings and pricing, and general economic circumstances, the Company’s business prospects may be materially different from forward-looking statements made by the Company.

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India’s Largest Ever Rocket – GSLV MK3

M5AKA — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:07:47 +0000

It’s tipped to be India’s heaviest rocket till date weighing 640 tons, it’s also taken 10 years to develop and will hopefully launch Indian astronauts into space. That’s the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) designed and developed GSLV MK3 that has cost Rs 2500 crores and will put India on the multimillion dollar commercial launch market.

Watch ISROs GSLV MK3 – First Look

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