The South African Radio League (SARL) report at the pre-conference Engineering meeting held on Friday [June 19] members of the SA AMSAT CubeSat team made some tough decisions.

During the past few years, various options and subsystems have been experimented with.

The team has now set the launch date of KLETSkous at July 2017 with the first flight model to be ready by February 2016 for testing after which final integration will start. This requires that various module designs are locked down and built by October 2015.

It is planned to have all the modules wired together in a breadboard configuration for testing the interoperation of the various sub-units by December 2015. Some modules are at a more advanced stage than others, but in the next few months, the team expect to catch up and meet the deadline for the first breadboard test.

Frik Wolff, ZS6FZ, the League’s technical manager, has joined the team and is working on solar panels and stabilisation issues. Francois Oberholzer, an honours student at Stellenbosch University, is working on improving the weight/strength relationship of the space frame, a project that is part of his thesis. Nico van Rensburg, ZS6QL, as programme manager and the person responsible for documentation, will support the project manager, Hannes Coetzee, ZS6BZP.

There are many opportunities for radio amateurs to join the engineering team. If you have a particular expertise or passion to add value to the  KLETSKOUS project, please discuss your participation with Hannes Coetzee or any of the team members and send your details to saamsat@intekom.co.za

Source SARL http://www.sarl.org.za/

KLETSkous http://www.amsatsa.org.za/KLETSkous.htm

SA AMSAT Space Symposium June 20, 2015
http://www.amsatsa.org.za/SA%20AMSAT%20SPACE%20SYMPOSIUM%202015%20programme.pdf