Category Daily Updates

Mar 10 2014

434 MHz XABEN and other balloon launches go ahead today

High altitude balloon 434 MHz trackers made by Chris M6EDF

High altitude balloon 434 MHz trackers made by Chris M6EDF

Steve G8KHW planned to launch five balloons XABEN64-68 carrying 434 MHz payloads from Elsworth on Wednesday, March 12. The permit for them arrived at the last minute on Wednesday morning. Technically the flights need a permit despite being 100g balloons as they are on a line rather than mounted in the neck.

The balloons may have a range of 200-500 km so should be receivable on a SSB (USB) radio over much of the UK or can be received World-Wide using the SUWS WebSDR

Steve says: The plan is to launch 5 identical payloads on 5 identical 100g balloons as near identically filled as I can manage in order to see the sort of spread of burst altitudes. The balloons will be launched as quick as I can fill them and launch them – so its likely that all 5 balloons will be in the air at the same time.

With all those flights I’m going to need some help tracking them – so lots of listeners would be appreciated. Callsigns and Frequencies to follow on the UKHAS Mailing List – but all will be on 434 MHz with standard 50 Baud 470 Hz 7N1 RTTY.

SSDV picture from a PIE balloon - Image credit Dave Akerman M6RPI

SSDV picture from a PIE balloon – Image credit Dave Akerman M6RPI

XABEN64-68 Callsigns and Frequencies (USB):
– uX3 434.250
– uX0 434.350
– uX1 434.400
– uX2 434.450
// skipping 434.500 to avoid BALYOLO
– uX5 435.550

There should be a launch from Westcott, Buckinghamshire on Wednesday at 12.00 Callsign: BALYOLO Frequency 434.500 MHz.

Project Ascend are launching Wednesday at 0900 from Cockermouth,Cumbria. They say please listen out for us on 434.450 MHz USB,  Callsign HAB55331. Further information at http://projectascend.co.uk/

Dave Akerman M6RPI/M0RPI says he’s planning to launch at around 2pm on Thursday, it’ll be a regular payload up-burst-down, probably with 2 trackers. The launch will take place from the field behind Dave’s new house just north of Ross-On-Wye, so receivers in the west of England will be particularly welcome. No SSDV just 50 baud RTTY telemetry. There will be live video streaming of the launch and chase at http://www.batc.tv/streams/m0rpi_chase

The two payloads are BUZZ and ZURG.  Both 50 baud 7 bits no parity 2 stop bits, 480Hz shift. BUZZ is on 434.600 MHz and ZURG on 434.650 MHz.  Former is an rfm22b and latter an NTX2 so they will drift somewhat.

On Thursday, March 13 Adam Cudworth will be launching HABE 12 from Worcestershire on 434.200 MHz.

James Coxon M6JCX launching a PICO balloon on 434.301 MHz USB

James Coxon M6JCX launching a PICO balloon on 434.301 MHz USB

Check the IRC channel for chat about the launches on irc.freenode.net #highaltitude
A web client is available at http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=highaltitude

Online real-time tracking of balloons
http://spacenear.us/tracker/

Listen to the balloons online using the Southampton University Wireless Society (SUWS) 434 MHz WebSDR located near Basingstoke (51.294N, 1.131W)
https://amsat-uk.org/2013/12/28/websdr-for-434-and-1296-mhz/

Beginners Guide to Tracking using dl-fldigi software
http://ukhas.org.uk/guides:tracking_guide

To get up-to-date information on balloon flights subscribe to the UKHAS Mailing List by sending a blank email to this address: ukhas+subscribe@googlegroups.com

Mar 10 2014

CubeSat Propulsion at George Washington University

First firing of synchronized 3-channel Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster subsystem at NASA Ames Research Center Spaceshop, August 2013

First firing of synchronized 3-channel Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster subsystem at NASA Ames Research Center Spaceshop, August 2013

Samudra Haque N3RDX is involved in developing a Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster (μCAT) propulsion system for CubeSats.

The Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory (MpNL, http://www.mpnl.seas.gwu.edu/), of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, of George Washington University (Washington, DC), announced at the 2014 IEEE Aerospace Conference (Big Sky, MT), a ground breaking electric propulsion application opportunity for the global Small Satellite community: the On-orbit Micro-propulsion eXperiment Program (OMXP) started on March 1, 2014.

The program is initially targeted to educational institutions with pico/nano/micro-satellites who are seeking propulsion systems for their space missions. The MpNL has ongoing research activity in scalable, small, efficient and safer electric propulsion systems, and is preparing flight hardware for the first on-orbit demonstration mission, of a 4-channel Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster (μCAT) subsystem, in 2015 onboard a 1.5U CubeSat that is fully funded. μCAT subsystems were tested and evaluated at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 5 in August, 2013.

GWU-ARC Mapers Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster PhoneSat Experiment

GWU-ARC Mapers Micro-Cathode Arc Thruster PhoneSat Experiment

The OMXP program is intended to support further technology readiness level raising exercises of the current subsystem and its more capable next generation derivatives that will continue to be researched and prototyped at MpNL, by partnering with experimental spacecraft designers, as early adopters, seeking to add capabilities to their space missions such as: station keeping, orbit maintenance, orbit adjustment, attitude control, orbit transfer, in-space propulsion, deorbit system and proximity operations, or other uses. The program will actively support the co-development of microthruster subsystems compatible with the emerging 3U-6U CubeSat standards, and where practical, for larger bus designs up to 50 Kg mass.

Academic institutions/affiliated groups are invited to propose, as Joint Research Partner, collaborative projects where μCAT or its next generation derivatives can be utilized on a Space mission, in lieu of an affordable cost-recovery agreement for parts, and through the execution of collaborative joint agreements for intellectual property rights, data collection, reporting, publication, and any other issues of mutual interest.

1-ch uCAT subsystem by Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Lab (c) 2013 Samudra Haque N3RDX

1-ch uCAT subsystem by Micropropulsion and Nanotechnology Lab (c) 2013 Samudra Haque N3RDX

All academic institutions/affiliated groups are welcome to apply. International institutions may be subject to compliance with requirements of applicable U.S. export laws.

The MpNL sincerely appreciates support by industry partners for the On-orbit Micro-propulsion eXperiment Program, and welcomes interested participants, subject to compliance with University regulations on sponsorship.

Samudra Haque N3RDX
Ph.D Candidate
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
The George Washington University
samudra@gwu.edu
(202) 812-3325

Mar 10 2014

UK CubeSat Weekend: March 29-30, 2014

A Typical CubeSat

A Typical CubeSat

The UK CubeSat Weekend, taking place at Satellite Applications Catapult in Harwell Didcot, will allow members of the public to work together to design, build and balloon launch a flight ready CubeSat engineering model, and a flight model suitable for launch into low earth orbit.

The purpose of the weekend is to demonstrate that amateur groups with no experience of spacecraft design or assembly can design, build and fly. Participants are invited to register teams of two to five members each, to build and test the CubeSat.

Objectives:
– Assemble and program a PocketSpacecraft.com ScoutArray
– Test and optionally improve its functionality on the bench
– Integrate into a CubeSat
– Test the functionality on a tethered balloon

The event takes place at the Satellite Applications Catapult, Electron Building, Fermi Avenue, Harwell Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QR. Registration details at https://sa.catapult.org.uk/cubesat-weekend

Mar 10 2014

OSCAR-11 30th Birthday Report

UOSAT-2 - OSCAR-11

UOSAT-2 – OSCAR-11

OSCAR-11 (AKA UoSAT-2 and UO-11) celebrated its 30th birthday in space on 01 March! It was designed, built and launched within a period of six months, using commercially available ‘off the shelf’ components (COTS). Once again, congratulations to Professor Sir Martin Sweeting G3YJO, his team at the University of Surrey and the groups of radio amateurs who also contributed to the project.

This report covers the period from 01 January 2013 to 05 March 2014. During this time there have been no significant changes apart from the gradual drift of the on-board clock. There was also an advance of one day in the displayed date. This was caused by a known leap year problem in the date chip, which has always existed since launch. Owing to the large accumulated time/date error 29 February 2012 on the satellite occurred in January 2013 on Earth!  The satellite has been transmitting on a regular cycle of 10.35 days on followed by 10.35 days off.

Good copy has been obtained obtained from decoded telemetry frames and many reports have been posted on the DCARR general satellite status website http://oscar.dcarr.org/

UOSAT_OSCAR-11The satellite continues to be subjected to eclipses during each orbit, resulting in weaker signals at those times. During the winter in the UK the evening passes were in the Earth’s shadow, and very weak signals have been received, which could not be demodulated and could be only detected with the receiver in CW mode . As the longer daylight hours of summer approach, the evening passes in the UK should gradually become clear of eclipses, resulting in stronger signals. Eclipses are expected to continue until 2019.

The on-board clock gained 98 seconds during the 14 month reporting period, which is comparable with the 60 seconds gain per year when the satellite was launched. There is however a large accumulated error of 307.54090 days slow. This was caused mainly by the clock stopping during eclipses, when there was also an unknown drain on the power supply. The units of the least significant digit correspond approximately to seconds (0.86 seconds actually).

UOSAT 2 / OSCAR-11 with Dave Brock UoS kneeling Christine Sweeting G6APF and Neville Bean G8NOB

UOSAT 2 / OSCAR-11 with Dave Brock UoS kneeling Christine Sweeting G6APF and Neville Bean G8NOB

At the present time, while OSCAR-11 is operating in a predictable way, please DO NOT send reports or files by e-mail. However, could all listeners continue to enter their reports on the general satellite status website http://oscar.dcarr.org/ . This is a very convenient and easy to use facility, which shows the current status of all the amateur satellites, and is of use to everyone. Reports around the expected times of switch-on and switch-off are of special interest, especially for times 13:00 to 18:00 and 22:00 to 08:00 UTC, to when the satellite is out-of-range in the UK .

The VHF beacon frequency is 145.826 MHz.  AFSK FM ASCII Telemetry. The satellite is operating in the default mode, controlled by the watchdog timer, with a cycle time of 20.7 days. 10.35 days on followed by 10.35 days off.

An extended version of this report is available on my website, and new listeners to OSCAR-11 should read this for
further information. The URL is http://www.g3cwv.co.uk/oscar11.htm

Martin Sweeting G3YJO testing the UO-11 digitalker

Martin Sweeting G3YJO testing the UOSAT-2 UO-11 digitalker

This page contains links to the report, a short audio clip to help you identify the satellite and a file of recent telemetry received. The website also contains an archive of news & telemetry data which is updated from time to time, and details about using a soundcard or hardware demodulators for data capture. There is also software for capturing data, and decoding ASCII telemetry.

The easiest way to check whether OSCAR-11 is operational is to look at the General Satellite Status website
http://oscar.dcarr.org/index.php .

If you place this bulletin on a terrestrial packet network, please use the bulletin identifier $BID:U2RPT159.CWV, to
prevent duplication.

73 Clive G3CWV xxxxx@amsat.org (please replace the x’s by g3cwv)

OSCAR-11 / UOSAT-2 Celebrates 30 Years in Orbit
https://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/05/oscar-11-uosat-2-celebrates-30-years-in-orbit/

OSCAR-11 page on the DK3WN satellite blog at http://www.dk3wn.info/p/?cat=47

SSTL Blog – Happy 30th Birthday to UOSAT-2
http://www.sstl.co.uk/Blog/March-2014/Happy-30th-Birthday-to-UoSAT-2-

OSCAR-9 and OSCAR-11 TV News Reports
https://amsat-uk.org/2011/10/30/oscar-9-and-oscar-11-tv-news-reports/

BBC Micro ASTRID UoSAT receiver and AMSAT-UK Software Library
https://amsat-uk.org/2011/12/11/bbc-micro-and-amsat-uk-software-library/

Mar 9 2014

A chat with Bob Twiggs KE6QMD, father of the CubeSat

First-MOVE_Students_with_Bob_Twiggs_KE6QMD_2560

First-MOVE CubeSat students with Bob Twiggs KE6QMD

Radio amateur Bob Twiggs KE6QMD is interviewed by Stephen Clark in Spaceflight Now.

Read the interview at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1403/08cubesats/

The team behind the recently launched $50sat PocketQube programmed the satellite’s FM CW beacon to send “TNX KE6QMD” to thank their mentor Bob Twiggs KE6QMD.

$50sat Ham Radio Challenge
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2014/february/$50sat_ham_radio_challenge.htm

Mar 9 2014

Radio amateurs receive NASA ISEE-3 / ICE Spacecraft

Radio amateurs have received signals over a distance of 43 million km from the NASA ISEE-3 / ICE deep space probe which was retired from service in 1997.

AMSAT-DL have released this statement:

ISEE-3 - ICE Spacecraft - Image credit NASA

ISEE-3 – ICE Spacecraft – Image credit NASA

On March 1st and 2nd, 2014 radio amateurs were able to detect the beacon signal from the retired NASA deep space probe ICE (International Cometary Explorer) at the Bochum Observatory (Germany). After some changes to the ground equipment and aligning the receive antenna to the predicted position in the sky, the beacon signal could positively be identified due to its frequency, the position in the sky and the frequency shift due to the radial velocity (Doppler shift).

For this detection the 20m radio telescope from the Bochum Observatory was used. In 2003, AMSAT-DL converted this former industrial monument into a fully functional groundstation for deep space probes. Since 2009 the facility is being used by volunteers almost full time as ground receive station for data from the STEREO mission with its two spaceprobes monitoring the sun from different viewing angles.

The International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) was launched in 1978 and became the first spacecraft to orbit the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point, measuring the interaction between the Earth’s magnetic field and the Sun. It was the first spacecraft to detect the stream of particles (“solar wind”) approaching Earth. In 1982, the spacecraft was renamed the “International Cometary Explorer” (ICE) and diverted to the Moon, where its gravitational pull placed ICE on a heliocentric orbit. In 1985, the comet Giacobini-Zinner was visited (the first time a comet had been encountered by a spacecraft), followed by observation of Halley’s Comet in 1986.

Amateur Radio Facility at Bochum

Amateur Radio Facility at Bochum

While the instrumentation on board was still functional and fuel for more trajectory maneuvers was available, support for the ICE mission was terminated in 1997, though the spacecraft transmitter was left on. It was last detected by the NASA Deep Space Network in 2008. Its orbit however results in the spacecraft returning to Earth-Moon space in August of 2014. A small propulsive maneuver and lunar flyby could allow ICE to be directed into an Earth-Sun L1 halo orbit and perhaps resume a science mission, depending on instrument health. However in February 2014 a NASA study determined that the required resources to contact the spacecraft were not available anymore and due to budgetary constraints no further contact attempts were planned. In light of the recent observations and the available facilities in Bochum, additional studies about the economic feasibility to add a suitable uplink are being done.

We would like to thank Jeremy Bauman from KinetX Aerospace (Tempe AZ, USA) for providing the ICE trajectory solution which was essential in finding the spacecraft and Jon D. Giorgini from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena CA, USA) for his support.

AMSAT-DL
Dr. Achim Vollhardt DH2VA
email: ICEteam at amsat-dl.org

ISEE-3 ICE spacecraft signal spectrum March 2, 2014 at 1822 UT

ISEE-3 ICE spacecraft signal spectrum recorded on March 2, 2014 at 1822 UT using the 20m dish antenna of Bochum Observatory, Germany. Range 43M km, azimuth 230°, elevation 49°. Average of 2 spectra spanning 2.1 seconds. With a bin bandwidth of 1.6 Hz, the SNR of 15.8 dB equates to a CNR of 17.8 dB. Indicated frequency is relative to the programmed center frequency of 2217.5 MHz of the measurement equipment.

The satellite carries Redundant S-band transponders, each with 5 Watt RF output but it is now only transmitting a carrier signal. The following information is from the ISEE-3/ICE Telecommunications Summary http://mdkenny.customer.netspace.net.au/ISEE-3.pdf

Transponder A:
2090.66 MHz RHCP uplink, command or ranging
2270.40 MHz RHCP downlink, telemetry or ranging

Transponder B:
2041.95 MHz LHCP uplink, command
2217.50 MHz LHCP downlink, telemetry

Transmit antenna: medium gain with dual inputs for simultaneous right and left hand circular polarization downlink, 8 rows of 4 elements, 7 dBi, ±6° beamwidth, multibeam, electronically steerable, four lobe, omni directional coverage in azimuth

Receive antenna: 2042 MHz, intermediate gain, 1 row of 4 elements, 0 dBi, ±45° beamwidth

Read the Planetary Society ISEE-3/ICE post at
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/02070836-isee-3.html

ISEE-3/ICE Telecommunications Summary
http://mdkenny.customer.netspace.net.au/ISEE-3.pdf

ISEE-3/ICE on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ISEE3returns

Can Radio Hams Receive NASA’s ISEE-3/ICE ?
https://amsat-uk.org/2014/02/07/can-radio-hams-receive-nasas-isee-3ice/