Update Dec 9 : Contact POSTPONED An ARISS contact between students at Stella Maris College, Gzira, Malta, callsign 9H1MRL and the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for TBD.
The ISS crew member will be astronaut Koichi Wakata KI5TMN who will be using the ISS callsign OR4ISS. The downlink frequency is 145.800 MHz and the signal should be receivable in the British Isles and Europe.
A little bit of information about the school follows. Stella Maris College is a Lasallian school. It takes its inspiration from its founder John Baptist de la Salle. In the Christian faith, John De La Salle is venerated as the Patron Saint of Teachers.
Basically, a Lasallian School has the following characteristics:
A) respect for each student as a unique person.
B) A strong spirit of Community.
C) A school of Quality.
D) A school that embraces everyone.
E) Shows special preference for persons who are considered poor financially, morally, physically, psychologically.
Mission statement:
Our school is a place where everyone strives to create and nurture a holistic, inclusive and well-ordered learning climate thereby ensuring a high-quality, values-based academic preparation.
The school has an astronomical observatory and electronics forms part of the school curriculum.
The contact is being conducted by five local radio amateurs and we call ourselves ARISS team Malta; Dominic 9H1M, Manuel 9H1GW, Andrew 9H2AV, Trevor 9H5TS and Anthony 9H2AS. We have set up a station at the school’s auditorium and a 10 element crossed Yagi and rotator on the roof.
FUNcube-1 (AO73) Battery Voltage Telemetry Nov 21, 2022
Another year has passed and FUNcube 1 has continued to operate from its orbit around 600km above the earth. To start with some statistics. The spacecraft creates and downlinks data in frames that run for two minute periods. It has now transmitted more that 16 million of these frames or “Sequence Numbers”. Another big statistic is that more than 10 million data packets have been received by stations that have forwarded them to our Data Warehouse.
You can see the leading ground stations here http://warehouse.funcube.org.uk/ui/fc1-fm/satellite_ranking – special congratulations to those at the top scorers…many of them have individually forwarded more than 1 million packets. Thanks to all contributors around the world. Having this network of ground stations has enabled us to easily monitor the status of the spacecraft easily.
Back here on earth, as mentioned, we have continued to monitor the health of the spacecraft as these illumination levels and spin/tumble rates have changed over the months.
Whilst mentioning big numbers, we are now approaching 48500 orbits and this equates to a distance travelled of 2174091840000000000000000000 fermis since launch. That’s 2.1 ronnafermis. Yes these are genuine SI Units of Measure and are equivalent to 14.16 AU or almost half way to Neptune.
After some time in full sun, the spacecraft is now experiencing “normal” eclipse periods of around 25 minutes each orbit. This will reduce the on board temperatures and may influence the tumble rate which has been between 2 and 5 seconds for some time. The is quite fast and is not helping telemetry reception with our 5 second data frame mentioned above.
The present operational schedule is for high power telemetry when in sunlight and receive only when in eclipse. This seems to suit the EPS quite well and the battery bus voltages have been quite stable.
At least that was correct until early morning on Friday 11th November when the indicated bus voltage appeared to “drop off a cliff” over the period of just four orbits. Further analysis showed that the 3.3V bus consumption had suddenly jumped four times normal. As can be seen by the graph above this problem then disappeared just as suddenly and the bus voltage recovered quite quickly. Investigations are continuing!
Please keep the telemetry reports coming in and let us know if you would like a Fitter message uploaded for any educational or outreach events.
It is understandable that amateur radio operators in North America are disappointed that they cannot experience the fun of using QO100. However, although the footprint charts that have been published show that it is not possible, there have been good reports recently about the successful QO-100 expedition in Indonesia. In particular YC1HVZ/P successfully operated through the QO100 narrow band transponder from OI42DE at -1.2 degrees elevation!
This success suggests that it should be possible to make contacts through QO-100 from at least one North American location.
Examination of the footprint maps and the BATC / AMSAT QO100 dish pointing tool https://eshail.batc.org.uk/point/ shows that the historic site at Signal Hill at St Johns on Newfoundland may be just the location from which to make the attempt.
There would be a lot of challenges to be overcome!
Would the usual QO100 groundstation be sufficient or would a large dish and high power on the 2.4GHz be required? Could activity include operation of DATV through the wideband transponder? As signals from the ground station will probably be relying on tropospheric ducting for the first few miles, an alternative site, lower down, near the beach, might actually be better. What time of year, and what weather conditions might be most favourable? And perhaps the biggest unknown is whether the footprint maps for QO100 reflect the actual coverage or it is squinted towards the east by a couple of degrees?
Having been involved with supporting the QARS and AMSAT-DL since the inception of QO100, AMSAT-UK and BATC would like to establish this challenge and will award trophies as follows.
The station that succeeds in having the first 2-way QSO via the QO-100 narrow band transponder when operating from Newfoundland.
The station that succeeds in having more than 100 2-way QSOs via the QO-100 narrow band transponder when operating from Newfoundland.
The station that succeeds in having the first 2-way DATV QSOs via the via the QO-100 wide band transponder when operating from Newfoundland.
Subsequent operations from Newfoundland will also be eligible to apply for a special Certificate
Watch QO-100 North America Challenge talk at 2022 AMSAT-UK Colloquium
Details of tests being planned, and general questions should be submitted by email to
awards@amsat-uk.org
Claims for trophies and certificates should also be submitted to the same address.
On Friday, October 7, 2022, from 15:14 GMT there will be a amateur radio contact from Antarctica with the International Space Station (ISS).
Students from the #38 Raul Alfonsin school at the Esperanza Antarctic base will ask questions that will be answered by astronaut Kjell Lindgren, KO5MOS, aboard the ISS, with a telebridge link being provided by ON4ISS, AMSAT Belgium.
This event was managed before ARISS (Amateur Radio on the ISS) by CETRA (Science, Education and Technology united by Amateur Radio) subcommission of AMSAT-LU, led by Luis Funes, LU8YY/Q, NASA/ARISS Telebridge.
AMSAT thanks COCOANTAR (ANTARCTIC Joint Command) for their collaboration and commitment to make this special event possible (1st Contact of the ISS with Antarctica), and to ARISS Canada for their valuable support.
This adds to the WSPR LU1ZV beacon active in Antarctica donated by AMSAT-LU.
CAS-5A Frequencies:
AMSAT-UK 
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