Tag Archives: Amateur Radio

Oct 30 2015

Tim Peake KG5BVI and the ISS Astro Pi’s

Competition winner Hannah Belshaw with the Astro Pi flight unit. Hannah’s entry logs data from the Astro Pi sensors, and visualises it later using structures in a Minecraft world.

Competition winner Hannah Belshaw with the Astro Pi flight unit.
Hannah’s entry logs data from the Astro Pi sensors, and visualises it later using structures in a Minecraft world.

AMSAT-UK members are leading on the Amateur Radio on the ISS (ARISS) Schools contacts programme for the upcoming Tim Peake Principia mission to the ISS. A number of high profile school contacts are planned to be carried out and this activity is being coordinated with the UK Space Agency as part of the overall Principia Educational Outreach programme.

Two specially augmented Raspberry Pi’s called Astro Pi‘s are planned to fly on an Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo freighter to the ISS in early December. They will be used by UK astronaut Tim Peake KG5BVI during his Principia mission on the Space Station which is expected to commence in mid-December.

The Astro Pi’s are planned to run experimental Python programs written by young people in schools across the country; the results will be returned back to Earth at the end of the mission. ARISS/AMSAT-UK members are actively involved in discussions with the UK Space Agency, ESA, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and others to establish the feasibility of re-purposing one of the Astro Pi units, either within or post Tim Peake’s mission, to provide an alternative video source for the amateur radio HamTV transmitter in the ISS Columbus module. Additional discussions are ongoing with all parties for joint educational activities into the future with the Astro Pi units being networked and potentially enhancing the capability of the amateur radio station on board Columbus.

The main mission of HamTV is to perform contacts between the astronauts on the ISS and school students, not only by voice as now, but also by unidirectional video from the ISS to the ground. ARISS has been working with Goonhilly and hope to provide a video download facility via one of their large dishes for the schools contacts as well as attempting to receive the video at each school as part of the contact.

Principia mission http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Principia

School Shortlist for Tim Peake Space Station Contact
https://amsat-uk.org/2015/07/14/school-shortlist-tim-peake-iss/

HamTV https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/hamtv-on-the-iss/

Astro Pi http://astro-pi.org/
Twitter https://twitter.com/astro_pi

Oct 30 2015

Fort Worth students talk to ISS

Daggett Montessori Students - Credit Fort Worth ISD

Daggett Montessori Students – Credit Fort Worth ISD

Students at Daggett Montessori School in Fort Worth used amateur radio to talk to astronaut Kjell Lindgren KO5MOS, aboard the International Space Station.

Grace Jordan talks to the ISS

Grace Jordan talks to the ISS

Before the contact Cowtown Amateur Radio Club member Keith Pugh W5IU explained to the students how they are able to talk to the ISS.

The contact, which took place on Thursday, October 29, gave the students the opportunity to ask questions about life in space. The Star-Telegram newspaper reports Grace Jordan, a seventh-grader, wondered about the effects of microgravity on food digestion.

Kjell used the amateur radio station in the ESA ISS Columbus module callsign NA1SS, while the students used the station K5COW set up by Cowtown Amateur Radio Club in the school auditorium.

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) lets students worldwide experience the excitement of talking directly with crew members of the International Space Station, inspiring them to pursue interests in careers in science, technology, engineering and math, and engaging them with radio science technology through amateur radio.

Watch Daggett Montessori MS Talk to Space Station 2015

Read the Star-Telegram story at
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article41837055.html

ARISS http://ariss.org/

Oct 30 2015

Proposed 50-54 MHz Agenda Item for WRC-19

Logo WRC RA 2015Details have been released by Ofcom of the UK positions for WRC-15 which takes place in Geneva, November 2-27, 2015.

Ofcom’s statement references the document containing the European Common Proposals for agenda items for the next conference, WRC-19. One proposal is EUR-A25-2 – Primary allocation of the band 50-54 MHz to the Amateur Service in Region 1. The inclusion of this proposal is very welcome since it would facilitate further worldwide harmonization.

Although the proposal only references the Amateur Service such an allocation would be of great benefit to the Amateur Satellite Service.

A 50 MHz Amateur Satellite allocation would offer:
• low Doppler shift
• good link budget requirements
• relieve pressure on the only existing VHF amateur satellite allocation on 145 MHz.

Doppler
A 50 MHz signal from a satellite in an 800 km orbit would have a Doppler shift of +/-1.1 kHz during a 15 minute pass compared with +/-3.27 kHz at 145 MHz greatly easing tuning requirements.

Link Budget
The free space path loss at 50 MHz would be 9.2 dB lower than on 145 MHz. A low path loss is particularly important for small satellites with a limited power budget such as CubeSats or PocketQubes. These satellites may be just 10x10x10 cm or smaller and the limited surface area restricts the amount of solar power than can be generated. Typical transmitter output powers range between 100 mW and 400 mW. This power might be shared by a beacon and up to 5 SSB stations in the transponder passband, giving maybe 50 mw per station. Because of their size these satellites have to use simple omni-directional antennas such as a dipole or monopole

Satellite antennas for this band will need to be kept to a manageable size, this will help drive experimentation and innovation in antenna design for these frequencies. Where the band is used as a satellite uplink there is no need to utilize a full size antenna.

The low path loss of this band could facilitate the development of compact rapid deployment satellite ground stations utilizing omni-directional antennas for emergency communication scenarios.

Relieve Congestion
The existing satellite segment at 145.8-146.0 MHz is already congested with satellite downlinks. Most frequencies are already in use by four or more satellites. An additional VHF allocation would relieve the pressure.

ITU Footnote 5.282
This footnote currently covers the Amateur Satellite Service UHF and Microwave allocations between 435 MHz and 6 GHz.
It would be desirable if the footnote could be expanded to include operation in 50-51 MHz.
http://life.itu.int/radioclub/rr/arsfoot.htm

Read the European Common Position on Agenda Item 10

Ofcom statement http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/wrc15/statement/UK_Positions_for_WRC-15.pdf

Oct 29 2015

Detailed information on the hunt for XO53

SSETI Express LogoFollowing on from the brief notes provided earlier, AMSAT-UK now have been given exclusive access to the full SSETI Express Phase E 400-800 THz Downlink Report. This report provides a clear insight into the work carried out during their recent campaign and to methods and equipment used.

It is worthy of note that ten years ago there was only one radio amateur in the launch team and that, since then, four of the other five team members have now obtained their licences.

Read the EXPRESS_E_ESA_2015-11-14_-_400-800_THz_Downlink_Report

As the report states, further observations will be much appreciated!

Oct 28 2015

Young people build antennas at Goonhilly

Young people build antennas at GoonhillyYear 11 students have been spending a week’s work experience at Goonhilly Earth Station learning about radio and satellite receivers. They researched and built a low-cost receiver using the FUNcube Dongle Pro+ Software Defined Radio.

Watch the video How to listen to the International Space Station

Goonhilly Earth Station http://www.goonhilly.org/

FUNcube Dongle Pro+ SDR http://FUNcubeDongle.com/

Oct 27 2015

Tenth Anniversary of XO-53 Launch

SSETI Express XO-53 streaks across the dark Swedish sky on October 27, 2015. Two images combined, and zoomed. As you can see, they caught a flare. The gap in the middle is when the mirror of the camera was moving in between shots. The two stars marked are the upper two of The Plough.

SSETI Express XO-53 streaks across the dark Swedish sky on October 27, 2015.
Two images combined, and zoomed. As you can see, they caught a flare.
The gap in the middle is when the mirror of the camera was moving in between shots.
The two stars marked are the upper two of The Plough.

The XO-53 (SSETI Express) satellite was launched October 27, 2005 at 06:52 UT on board a Kosmos 3M rocket launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in central Russia.

SSETI Express XO-53

SSETI Express XO-53

SSETI Express was developed by the Education Office of the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of the “Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative”. The satellite measures 60x60x70 cm with a mass of about 50 kg. It was built by university students from a number of teams from all across Europe and assembled at the ESA ESTEC facility in the Netherlands.

AMSAT-UK provided a 3 watt S band transmitter to the project – on the basis that it could be linked to the UHF receiver for operation as a single channel FM voice transponder when all the experiments have been completed. The unit also incorporates its own switch mode power supply and a 38k4 TNC to allow the rapid downlinking of data – especially necessary for the camera experiment.

Shortly after launch SSETI deployed three CubeSats, XI-V, UWE-1 and Ncube-2, developed by university students. After deploying the CubeSats, XO-53’s batteries stopped charging and the spacecraft went silent.

ESRANGE in Arctic Sweden

ESRANGE in Arctic Sweden

On the 10th Anniversary of the SSETI Express Launch a crack squad of geeks, Neil Melville-Kenney PA9N, Graham Shirville G3VZV, Karl Kaas OZ2KK, Sascha Tietz KJ6LIL and Lars Mehnen OE3HWM, headed to the ESRANGE facility in Northern Sweden to attempt to SEE the spacecraft for the first time in a decade.

They successfully captured images of the satellite as it streaked across the dark Swedish sky.

Read the AMSAT-UK SSETI Express Handbook

Read the Story of the birth of the On Board Computer for SSETI Express by Karl Kaas

AMSAT-UK has been given exclusive access to the report on the hunt for SSETI Express. Read the SSETI Express Phase E – 400-800 THz Downlink Report

Further pictures are available on the Facebook page of Neil Melville-Kenney PA9N

Explanation of the SSETI Express XO-53 observed flare in terms of the two images captured on Oct. 27, 2015. Note, the team couldn't use mirror lock-up in combination with the specific remote. Hence the wobble.

Explanation of SSETI Express observed flare in terms of the two images captured Oct. 27, 2015
Note team couldn’t use mirror lock-up in combination with the specific remote, hence wobble