The ARRL report when Ron Williams, N9UIK, and his team of “astronauts” head to “Mars” this spring, they’ll be taking Amateur Radio along, just as NASA space travelers have done.
Williams is part of Mission 2 (of four) in the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation — HI-SEAS, in which participants will simulate living and working within a Martian outpost — actually a solar-powered dome at a remote site some 8000 feet up on the slopes of Mauna Loa. Conducted by the University of Hawaii and Cornell University, the project has partial funding from NASA.
“I am confident that when we eventually go to Mars, there will be some type of involvement with the Amateur Radio community,” Williams said, noting Amateur Radio’s long-standing role in space missions, including the International Space Station. “We would like to simulate this on this mission.” Part of that will mean integrating a 20 minute signal delay into all communications, whether via Amateur Radio or the Internet.
“This will simulate the distance, when greatest, between Earth and Mars,” explained Williams, a clinical neuropsychologist from Indiana. At 60, he’s the oldest member of the team; the youngest is 26. Williams, is one of two hams on this crew increment. The other is Ross Lockwood, VA6RLW, of Alberta.
“Our proposed outreach simulation to the Amateur Radio community will also involve this signal delay,” Williams continued. “To the best of our knowledge, this will be unique to any Amateur Radio special event ever conducted.” HI-SEAS also was able to obtain the special event call sign K6B for the project for nearly the entire length of the mission, instead of the typical 15 days.
The March 2014 issue of the free Radio Astronomy Group publication RAGazine is now available for download.
This issue includes:
– RAG 2014 Meeting, Leicester
– Book review: “Space Has No Frontier”
– VLF quarterly observing report
– Brief note on the comparison of bright meteors
– Engineering maths, and more
– Frequency ranges
– The state of flux – an Arduino based magnetometer
– Jansky’s seminal paper that started RA
– Intro. to radio objects that can be detected by the amateur radio astronomer: Part 1
– Technology watch
– Solar flare
The Southampton University Wireless Society (SUWS) Web-based software defined radio (SDR) has been used to receive signals from the new amateur radio LitSat-1 satellite.
The Lithuanian satellite LitSat-1 was deployed from the ISS on February 28 and the builders of the satellite have been able to use the SUWS WebSDR to receive the satellite when it is out of the range of Lithuania.
Noel G8GTZ, Martin G8JNJ and Phil M0DNY from the Southampton University Wireless Society, set up the WebSDR near Basingstoke in the UK. It currently supports parts of the 10 GHz, 1296 MHz, 432 MHz and 144 MHz bands and can be listened to from anywhere in the world.
– If tracking balloons please set your location in dl-fldigi to somewhere around 51.294, -1.131 so we don’t have any fake receiver lines on the map!
– Connection to the site is over a several km wifi link, so once you’ve found the signal, please switch off your waterfall view (Set to ‘blind’) to save bandwidth for others.
– The waterfall speed will also be automatically limited as the number of users increases.
Darius Kybartas LY3DA says that when listening for LitSat-1 on the WebSDR receiver enter your call sign or name in the “Your name or callsign” box and select a frequency of 145850 kHz with FM modulation.
LitSat-1 is very close to the International Space Station (ISS) so you can get a rough idea of when it will be in range of the UK based SUWS WebSDR by looking at the predictions for the ISS on the N2YO tracking website http://www.n2yo.com/ (use 51.294 North, 1.131 West for the coordinates).
KickSat deploying Sprite satellites – Image by Ben Bishop VK2FBRB
The largest ever launch of 437 MHz satellites is planned for March 16 at 0841 UT when 104 Sprite satellites will fly on the SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS 3 mission to be deployed into a 325×315 km 51.5 degree inclination orbit. You should be able to watch the launch live on NASA TV.
The project was originally conceived by AMSAT-UK member Michael Johnson M0MJJ at Cornell University. Michael was the first project manager who specified many aspects of the project, making it technically and financially viable. He left the project in 2012 to found PocketSpacecraft.com.
KickSat 437 MHz Sprite Satellite
A Sprite is a tiny, 3.5 by 3.5 cm, single-board spacecraft that was developed by Zac Manchester KD2BHC.
Each Sprite has a microcontroller, radio, and solar cells and is capable of carrying single-chip sensors, such as thermometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes, and accelerometers.
The 104 Sprites are carried in a 3U CubeSat called KickSat. They are stacked atop a spring-loaded pusher and secured by a nichrome burn wire system.
On reaching orbit KickSat will perform a de-tumble maneuver and establish communication with Cornell University’s ground station. After check-out, the spacecraft will be put in a sun-pointing attitude and spun up to maintain that attitude.
A command signal from the ground station will then trigger the deployment and the Sprites will be released as free-flying spacecraft. After deployment, telemetry and sensor measurements from the individual Sprites will be received through Cornell’s ground station in Ithaca, NY, as well as several other amateur ground stations around the world.
Equipment for receiving the Sprite 437 MHz signals
Due to the low orbit Sprites will have a short lifetime before they reenter the atmosphere and burn up. In the best-case scenario the orbital lifetime could be six weeks but realistically it may be considerably shorter depending on atmospheric conditions, maybe a matter of days.
All the Sprites operate on a single frequency of 437.240 MHz and use Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). The transmitter runs 10 mW output of Minimum Shift Keying (MSK) modulated binary data with each data bit modulated as a 511 bit Pseudo-Random Number (PRN) sequence. The ITU emission designator is 50K0G1D.
The KickSat CubeSat has downlinks on 437.505 MHz and 2401-2436.2 MHz.
Watch KickSat Sprite Deployment by Ben Bishop VK2FBRB
In this video Ben Bishop VK2FBRB gives an alternative view of the deployment
The RSGB IARU VHF/UHF/Microwaves discussion forum invites feedback on proposals to amend the bandplans.
Items being discussed are:
– Update to the 144MHz Satellite Allocation to formalise the shared use of 144.000-144.025 by linear amateur satellite transponders (Vienna follow on and already approved in Regions 2 and 3).
– Deletion of FAX frequencies
– IARU ATV Contests Rules/Date: This was also discussed at Vienna. The Dutch Society (Veron) is leading on an updated proposal to modernise the rules in liaison with ourselves and BATC. Our own interests are to introduce modern options for Remote Stations and Rover Stations to help boost activity. There is also a less-certain suggestion around moving its date from its current slot in September.
The ARRL report when Ron Williams, N9UIK, and his team of “astronauts” head to “Mars” this spring, they’ll be taking Amateur Radio along, just as NASA space travelers have done.
AMSAT-UK 
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