It has been reported that ARISSat-1 is in Emergency Mode in an attempt to conserve power.
10:24 UTC 22 August 2011
Category Daily Updates
Weather Sat Picture Received With FUNcube Dongle
Herbert DL4SDR used an AMSAT-UK FUNcube Dongle VHF/UHF software defined radio
NOAA 15 Received With FUNcube Dongle
to receive a weather satellite picture in the 136-138 MHz band. On the FUNcube Yahoo Group he writes:
Today [August 19] I received a picture from NOAA 15 WX satellite with simple “stuff” FUNcube Dongle (FCD) and a VHF/UHF Ground Plane Antenna up 12 meters above ground , 200 meters above sea level, 15 meter coax cable WITHOUT pre-amplifier !
Hardware: FCDpro with newest Firmware V18.i with PC WinXP with onboard Graphics-Chip
Software: FCD-DF, Doppler-DF, SpectraVue, wxtoimage
Nice to see what’s possible with simple “stuff” :))
Regards from Germany
Herbert DL4SDR
In a follow up email he said he had also used a Ground Plane Antenna in the attic as well as one outside to receive the picture. He says he was surprised to get this good quality.
The FUNcube Dongle was developed as part of the educational outreach for AMSAT-UK FUNcube satellite project. Although it was designed to enable school students to receive the satellite beacon the wide frequency coverage of 64 – 1700MHz has meant that it can be used for many other applications.
The AMSAT-UK FUNcude Dongle SDR is sold by Martin Lynch & Sons (ML&S) at
http://tinyurl.com/MartinLynchFCD
FUNcube Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FUNcube
AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium Videos
Thanks to the hard work of volunteers from the British Amateur Television Club (BATC) 14 videos of the presentations given to the AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium held in Guildford during July 30-31, 2011 are now available online.
The Chair of BATC Trevor Brown G8CJS edited over 16 hours of video to produce the final versions.
You can watch the videos online at http://www.batc.tv/
Click on the ‘Film Archive’ icon
Select ‘AMSAT 2011’ from the Category drop down menu
Click ‘Select Category’
Select the video you wish to watch
Click on ‘Select Stream’
Click the play icon ‘>’ on the player
Clicking on the icon to the left of the player volume control will give you full screen display.
You can also download a video file to your PC by clicking on the ‘Click Here’ link under the player.
Some of the PowerPoint slides are also available Here
AMSAT-UK publishes a colour A4 newsletter, OSCAR News, that is full of Amateur Satellite information. The Spring OSCAR News can be seen athttp://www.uk.amsat.org/on_193_final.pdf
Join AMSAT-UK online at http://tinyurl.com/JoinAMSAT-UK/
6U Canisterized Satellite Dispenser
A 6U Canisterized Satellite Dispenser was displayed at the recent Small Satellites conference that will allow larger CubeSats to be deployed.
Canisterized Satellite Dispensers (CSDs) are boxes that small payloads (CubeSats) are housed in during launch and dispensed from once in space. These dispensers reduce the risk that small secondary or tertiary payloads in the dispenser can damage the primary payload or be damaged by the primary.
Traditionally much smaller P-POD’s (Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployer) have been used to deploy CubeSats. The 6U CSD standard allows CubeSats up to 12 x 24 x 36 cm weighing 12Kg to be deployed and is shown in a YouTube video.
The YouTube description reads:
A 6U Canisterized Satellite Dispenser is operated on two kinds of rideshare adapters. The CSD is designed to dispense 12 kg Cubesat type satellites. It was designed and built by PSC. It’s part of a family of cubesat dispensers we will qualify and flight validate.
Bath TOPCAT Project
Talini holding a mockup of a cubesat (for testing antenna perfomance)
TOPCAT (TOPside ionosphere Computer Assisted Tomography) is a payload being developed at the University of Bath that will be launched on the UK’s first 3U CubeSat, UKube-1, next year.
ARISSat-1 BPSK Reception Challenge
ARISSat-1 was deployed from the ISS on August 3. It has a composite VHF downlink that will easily fit into the FUNcube Dongle (FCD) receive spectrum. The 145.920 MHz telemetry is 1000 bps BPSK and can, of course, also be received with a normal SSB 2 metre receiver.
The signal levels from ARISSat-1 should be similar to those we expect from the AMSAT-UK FUNcube-1 satellite (and also eventually from UKube-1) and the AMSAT-UK team are keen to discover what will be the minimum and best type of antennas for schools to use with a FUNcube Dongle (FCD) Software Defined Radio (SDR). Therefore user experience with the ARISSat-1 signals will be very valuable in making this determination.
To encourage everyone to receive the 145.920 MHz BPSK ARISSat-1 telemetry signal AMSAT-UK are offering a FUN reward for listeners!
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