Dec 15 2013

First Novel inspired by Cubesats and Personal Spacecraft

A Pyramid of Tiny Skulls - Andy Thomas G0SFJThe first novel to find inspiration from Cubesats and the new wave of personal spacecraft – such as the Sprites – has been published and is available from Amazon and Createspace.

In ‘A Pyramid of Tiny Skulls’, the story is this:

“On the edge of the city lies the neglected Scheme, a City Fund zone bounded by the Lake and the Pyramid.

Jack Malik, entrepreneur and nightclub operator, carries a letter from murdered dancer Alina home to Russian enclave Kaliningrad, and agrees to collect a secret parcel from Shanghai.

What he brings will attract the City Leader’s attention, and echo through the Cosmos.”

The novel is dedicated to whom Andy Thomas G0SFJ describes as “the visionaries of CubeSats and personal spacecraft”.

The Kindle page on the Amazon website allows you to read a sample of the book, see
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyramid-Tiny-Skulls-Andy-Thomas-ebook/dp/B00HB7IZDE/ref=sr_1_1

The paperback is at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pyramid-Tiny-Skulls-Andy-Thomas/dp/1494319683/ref=sr_1_1

CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/4548329

Dec 14 2013

KySat-2 Ham Radio Software Update

Archive image of KySat-1

Archive image of KySat-1

Jason Rexroat KK4AJE of the University of Kentucky KySat-2 team brings news of the latest version of the amateur radio ground station telemetry decoder software.

We really appreciate everyone using our ground station software to decode KySat-2 packets!  We are continuing to take suggestions and made several more bug fixes, and the third version of this software is now available for download!

Link: http://ssl.engineering.uky.edu/amateur-radio-operators/
KySat-2 Info: http://kentuckyspace.com/ or http://kysat2.engr.uky.edu/

Our changelog is included in the download, and also copied below.  Again, we appreciate all who have helped us gather telemetry from our satellite, and please continue to do so!  Email us with any bugs or suggestions for improvements and we’ll be sure to work on it!

Changelog:

– “Share” button to automatically email us our log files, along with counters showing how many beacons you’ve shared
– Custom COM port selection in case your created COM port doesn’t show up in our list
– Drag and dockable tabs
– Packaged into single executable file

These changes will enable further customization on your part, and the automatic sharing will put the data into a format our automated scripts can handle to generate our running telemetry tables. I know that the ping functionality is still disabled, but we are pushing through further subsystem checkout that will allow us to enable this and other functionality for you!

Jason Rexroat KK4AJE
Space Systems Lab, University of Kentucky
jason.rexroat<at>uky.edu

Minotaur-1 ELaNa-4 Satellites https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/elana-4-cubesats/

Dec 14 2013

Warwick University Satellite Team Win Rocket Slot

REXUS-BEXUS Student Experiment Programme LogoThe Warwick University Satellite Team (WUSAT) have won a place on the sub-orbital Rocket Experiments for University Students REXUS 1718 campaign. The team say:

We are delighted to announce that we have been successful in our bid for a slot on the REXUS 1718 campaign!

We will now be looking to expand our team to tackle the increase in workload primarily looking at 3rd year engineering students.

Thank you everyone for your support and REXUS/BEXUS for the excellent advice, we will continue to update you on our progress towards the project’s most ambitious target yet!

WUSAT Warwick University Satellite Project http://www.warwick.ac.uk/cubesat

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/WarwickUniversitySatellite

Twitter https://twitter.com/WUSAT_Team

REXUS/BEXUS (Rocket/Balloon Experiments for University Students)
https://www.facebook.com/rexusbexus

UK Students Fly CubeSat to 30km
https://amsat-uk.org/2013/04/10/uk-students-fly-cubesat-to-30km/

Dec 14 2013

UKube-1 on its way to Kazakhstan

UKube-1 CubeSat on its way to Kazakhstan - Credit Clyde Space

UKube-1 CubeSat on its way to Kazakhstan – Credit Clyde Space

UKube-1 left Clyde Space in Glasgow on its way to Baikonur in Kazakhstan on December 12, 2013. The 3U CubeSat carries a set of AMSAT-UK FUNcube boards (FUNcube-2) to provide an Educational beacon and a 435/145 MHz linear transponder for amateur radio SSB/CW communications.

Reports on a space flight forum indicate that the Soyuz-2-1B/Fregat-M which will carry UKube-1 is currently expected to launch on March 27, 2014.

Russian launch schedule thread http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26990.450

Clyde Space on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/clydespace

Dec 14 2013

PUCP-SAT-1 Deploys POCKET-PUCP Femtosatellite

CubeSat PUCP-SAT-1 - Credit Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

CubeSat PUCP-SAT-1 – Credit Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

The Peruvian CubeSat PUCP-SAT-1 (145.840 MHz AX.25 FM) was carried by the microsatellite UNISAT-5 which was launched on a Dnepr on November 21, 2013.

When in orbit UNISAT-5 deployed PUCP-SAT-1 and Neilsao Vilchez reports PUCP-SAT-1 has in turn deployed an even smaller satellite POCKET-PUCP.

The femtosatellite POCKET-PUCP measures just 8.35 by 4.95 by 1.55 cm and has a 10 mW 12 wpm CW (On-Off-Keying OOK) beacon on 437.200 MHz. The team at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú would welcome any reception reports.

Diagram showing PUCP-SAT-1 and POCKET-PUCP - Credit Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Diagram showing PUCP-SAT-1 and POCKET-PUCP – Credit Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Neilsao Vilchez says:

On Wednesday December 4 we detected our satellite PUCP-SAT-1 (launched from Dnepr RS-20/UNISAT-5).

We think it is one of the following objects:

-2013-066AC
-2013-066S
-2013-066T
-2013-066U

Which are very close to each other and we can not resolve which one it is.

Femtosatellite Pocket-PUCP - Credit Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Femtosatellite Pocket-PUCP – Credit Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

We got our packet beacon at 145.840 MHz with packets stays 20 seconds, so, it is undoubtedly our beacon, we know that PUCP-SAT-1 is alive, healthy, it has been recharging its batteries okay.

On Friday, December 6, as planned, the POCKET-PUCP (femtosatellite) was released around 0800 UT, we are looking for its 437.200 MHz transmission at 12 wpm.

Its transmission is OA4PUCP SAT1 XXX YYY ZZZ

PUCP-SAT-1 website http://inras.pucp.edu.pe/en/proyectos/pucp-sat-1/especificaciones-del-satelite/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pucp

Dnepr satellites https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/dnepr-november-2013/

CubeSats PUCP-SAT-1 Peru - ICUBE-1 Pakistan - HUMSat-D Spain - Credit Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

CubeSats PUCP-SAT-1 Peru – ICUBE-1 Pakistan – HUMSat-D Spain – Credit Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Dec 12 2013

FUNcube-1 Whole Orbit Data Available

FUNcube Whole Orbit Data - WODThe Data Warehouse now provides the facility to download FUNcube-1 (AO-73) Whole Orbit Data (WOD) as a .csv file. The file is produced at 23:59 every day and contains data for the preceding 24 hours. It contains all the channels shown on the WOD graph, which shows the latest orbit data captured.

The WOD page is at
http://warehouse.funcube.org.uk/wod.html

Please read the notes on the page regarding the times stored in the file.

FUNcube Yahoo Group https://amsat-uk.org/funcube/yahoo-group/

FUNcube http://www.funcube.org.uk/