A CubeSat in Space

The BBC report that Hackers plan to put their own communication satellites into orbit. The scheme was outlined at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

The project’s organisers said the Hackerspace Global Grid will also involve developing a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites.

Used together in a global network, these stations would be able to pinpoint satellites at any given time, while also making it easier and more reliable for fast-moving satellites to send data back to earth. “It’s kind of a reverse GPS,” Armin Bauer, said.

“GPS uses satellites to calculate where we are, and this tells us where the satellites are. We would use GPS co-ordinates but also improve on them by using fixed sites in precisely-known locations.”

Armin Bauer, said the team would have three prototype ground stations in place in the first half of 2012, and hoped to give away some working models at the next Chaos Communication Congress in a year’s time.

Read the full BBC story at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16367042

Building a Distrubuted Satellite Ground Station Network – A Call To Arms
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2011/Fahrplan/events/4699.en.html

Hackerspace Global Grid http://shackspace.de/wiki/doku.php?id=project:hgg

London Hackspace work on HackSat1 http://www.uk.amsat.org/2482

AMSAT-DL presentation to the Chaos Communication Camp in August
http://www.uk.amsat.org/2011/12/17/from-oscar-1-to-mars-and-beyond/

Hackers and Makers in AMSAT-UK are building the amateur radio satellite FUNcube.
AMSAT-UK publishes a colour A4 newsletter, OSCAR News, which is full of Amateur Satellite information.
Free sample issue at http://www.uk.amsat.org/on_193_final.pdf
Join online at http://tinyurl.com/JoinAMSAT-UK