FINAL 2005 UPDATE ON SSETI EXPRESS – OSCAR 53

Graham Shirville G3VZV

As has been already reported, SSETI Express XO-53 and eight other payloads successfully lifted off from Plesetsk in Northern Russia at 06:26 UTC on October 27th.

The satellite was designed to wait for some time after separation from the launch adaptor before activating any electrical circuits and exactly at the appointed moment, 08:33 UTC, UHF signals were heard at the ground station at Aalborg in Denmark, by a number of other amateurs in Europe and also by the launch team in Plesetsk (with a THF7 and a handheld Arrow antenna!)

On the first pass good telemetry was received and simple commanding from the ground was successfully tested. Just a few minutes later we even had an email from NORAD with some preliminary Two Line Elements which indicated that satellites had reached the correct orbit.

Subsequent orbits produced equally good signals but also showed that the battery volts were decreasing rapidly – it seemed that no charge was reaching them from the solar array.

Sadly it appears that, although the satellite was commanded to reduce power consumption to the minimum, the battery was finally depleted around midnight and no further signals have been heard from it since.

A Failure Analysis Team was immediately assembled at Aalborg as that was where most of the Express team members had already gathered. Their initial report has been prepared but not yet finalised. It seems likely that a MOSFET device in the battery charge regulator system has failed and it is this that may be preventing the proper charging of the battery. It has also been determined that there is a finite possibility that the fault may “self heal” and that XO-53 could therefore recommence operations at some time in the future.

The full report is expected to be available shortly and will be published as soon as possible.

It was not possible to activate the S-Band transmitter before the battery became depleted so we may never know how it survived the launch. In many ways however the mission has already been a success for SSETI itself as it demonstrated that it is possible for a group of university students to design and assemble a full size satellite in a short time and place it into space.

It has also been the opportunity for the radio amateur world to demonstrate their ability and willingness to create a worldwide network of groundstations – this is something that cost the professionals millions of pounds or dollars or euros each year. This demonstration will stand us in very good stead for the possibilities of being involved in future similar missions.

It has also shown that radio amateurs and students can share their passions and skills to great effect in the space world!

I would like to pay a tribute to my colleagues in the AMSAT-UK Express team of Sam Jewell G4DDK, David Bowman G0MRF, Howard Long G6LVB and Jason Flynn G7OCD. Their contributions not only to the S-Band unit but also to many other facets of the satellite were respected as invaluable.

Also to Charlie Suckling G3WDG who provided another 3 watt S Band PA (his first one continues to provide beautiful downlink signals on AO-51), to Richard Limebear G3RWL who put together the Express Handbook, to the Polish team at the University of Wroclaw for providing the S- Band antennas, the power splitter and beautiful enclosure, to Ib Chistofferesen OZ1MY and his AMSAT-OZ team for their tremendous support to the Danish students at the Ground Station and to Jean-Louis Rault F6AGR from AMSAT-F who arranged the proper ITU registration and notification for the satellite in the Amateur Satellite Service.

In the event, the success of our working arrangements with the other Express teams was down to the great skills of the Project manager - Neil Melville. Neil spent literally thousands of hours on the project working directly with a variety of teams around Europe to ensure that the satellite was ready for the launch. In the process all the groups have learnt a tremendous amount about building satellites and working as a team. Many valuable lessons have been learnt and documented.

Although this project was not expensive in monetary terms for AMSAT-UK, (the costs of components charged to our funds were less than £1500) the level of support it has received from hundreds of amateurs around the world has been immense and this visible support has been impressing the other Express teams for many months.

It appears that well over 1000 amateurs downloaded the SERACC client software, a similar number the Express Handbook which was made available in three languages, and over 500 downloaded the Integration and Launch campaign logbooks.

Hopefully further opportunities for cooperation between radio amateurs and similar projects will be developed in the future – I believe that the SSETI Express mission has laid down great foundations for this to occur.

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SSETI Express latest - 0940 UTC 27 Oct 2005.

The satellite was successfully launched on schedule, and signals from it have been reported by the ground station at Aarlburg University Denmark to indicate systems are nomimal during the first pass over Europe. The first signals received at Aarlburg indicated a Battery Voltage of 24v and OBC Temp of 5 degs C

Many congratulations to all the SSETI - Express Team, and to all participating members of AMSAT-UK!!

Jim Heck, G3WGM

The SSETI Express Handbook has now been updated, and there is also a Japanese translation available. Use the links below to download the latest versions - 11 Oct 05. English version (pdf, 1.2 Mb) French Version (pdf, 1.1 Mb) Japanese Version (pdf, 1.0 Mb) More details, and how to get a printed version are available in the shop

The following picture has just been received from Graham Shirville, G3VZV. He says

" The KosmoS launch vehicle carrying SSETI Express being
raised to the vertical position at the launch site in Plestesk 26th October
2005 08:15 UTC temp -5C

73 from b****y cold Plesetsk!"

 

From Graham Shirville, G3VZV in Plesetsk - 1000 UTC 24 Oct 2005:-

SSETI Express has now been successfully integrated onto the Kosmos launch adaptor which it shares with four other satellites. This is almost the final operation that needs to take place before the whole assembly is attached to the top of the launch vehicle. The S-Band "arming" plug has been installed so everything is set for eventual U/S transponder operation. The remaining protection panels will then be removed and all will be ready for Thursday's launch 

ESA Award for SSETI Express telemetry download competition

The Education Department of ESA, the European Space Agency, is delighted to announce details of the award that will be offered to the amateur radio community in relation to the downloading of telemetry from their SSETI Express student built satellite. The award will be given to the amateur who submits the largest number of valid telemetry and payload packets regardless of which band it is received on.

SSETI Express is scheduled for launch on September 27th from Plesetsk in northern Russia at approx 06:52 UTC. It will downlink telemetry in AX25 format at 9k6 on 437.250MHz and at 38k4 on 2401.835MHz. It will also be available for radio amateurs to use as a single channel FM transponder

All radio amateurs around the world are encouraged to download the necessary software from the www.sseti.org/express website (this will be available from approx 12th September) and to use the SERACC system to forward the telemetry to SSETI Express Mission Control. Submissions will be automatically recorded and the leaderboard will be shown on the website.

The winner will be offered the opportunity to visit the STEC06 Conference and Exhibition in Germany in Spring 2006. STEC, the Student Technology Education Conference, follows previous events in 2004 in Lausanne in Switzerland and in April 2005 in Aalborg in Denmark.

The three day event is similar to the AMSAT-NA Symposium and the AMSAT-UK Colloquium but with more breakout technical sessions in addition to the Keynote Speeches. The meetings are always interesting and thought provoking and great enthusiasm and passion is shown by all the attendees. The post meeting attitude adjustment sessions have also proven to be exciting.

The winner will also be encouraged to present a paper on how he/she achieved their success - but this is not mandatory!

In addition to attending the STEC 06 Conference, the winner will be invited to visit ESA's Mission Operations Centre  - ESOC - near Darmstadt in Germany where they will be given a private escorted tour of the facilities. ESOC currently controls the many exciting orbital and deep space ESA missions and will be responsible for the European Columbus module when it joins the International Space Station

For more information on the STEC events - check http://www.stec2005.space.aau.dk/ to see what this year's event included and for a few details of the ESOC facility visit http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESOC/
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The winner will be the amateur at the top of the leaderboard at 00:00 on Jan1st 2006. The prize will include economy class travel from your home location, accommodation and a "small" daily subsistence allowance.

AMSAT-UK wishes to congratulate and thank ESA for their generous prize, a first in the field, and is confident that it will add to the great enthusiasm for the SSETI Express project which already exists within the amateur radio community. It will be a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that the amateur radio groundstation "network" is a valuable resource for satellite projects which are able include useful amateur payloads

 

 

 

 

The SSETI Express webcam is almost always "on the air" at www.sseti.net

Thanks to Graham, G3VZV for this story and images.

We expect the flight model enclosure from Poland to arrive next week. We will then install and wire up all the various boards: