Antares-110 Amateur Radio CubeSat Integration Completed

Antares-110 CubeSat Integration - Image Credit Spaceflight Inc

Image Credit Spaceflight Inc

Several CubeSats carrying amateur radio payloads are planned to launch on the Antares-110 mission in April.

On the CubeSat mailing list Jason Andrews President and CEO of both Spaceflight Inc and Andrews Space posted:

Spaceflight Inc recently completed CubeSat integration activities for the Antares demonstration mission including deployment dress rehersal.  Spaceflight has two ISIPod deployers on this mission.  One contains three 1U spacecraft for NASA Ames Research Center and the other contains a 3U spacecraft for a commercial customer.  An image of the integration activity can be found here:

https://twitter.com/SpaceflightInc/status/306880665624924161/photo/1

Among the amateur radio CubeSats on the launch are three Phonesats which will all carry Google Nexus smartphones similar to the pioneering UK smartphone satellite STRaND-1 that was launched in February. There will be two PhoneSat 1.0’s and one PhoneSat 2.0 on the launch.

PhoneSat 1.0 cost about $3500 and is built around the Nexus One smartphone, it operates on battery power only with a mission lifetime of approx 1 week.

PhoneSat 2.0 is more expensive at $8000. It is built around the Nexus S smartphone and has solar panels on each face and a mission lifetime until de-orbit of approximately 2 weeks.

The IARU amateur satellite frequency coordination panel have coordinated frequencies of 437.425 MHz and 2401.2-2431.2MHz for the PhoneSats.

Also on the launch is the Dove-1 CubeSat. The Antares-110 launcher is expected to deploy the satellites into a 250 km 51.6° inclination orbit.

PSLV-C20 Object-Satellite Pairings

STRaND-1 PSLV-C20 Launch - Image credit ISRO

STRaND-1 PSLV-C20 Launch – Image credit ISRO

On the AMSAT Bulletin Board Alan WA4SCA has posted information from Space Track of the object-satellite pairings for the PSLV-C20 launch that carried the UK smartphone satellite STRaND-1 into space. He writes:

JSpOC [Joint Space Operations Center] has named the following satellites:

39086 – SARAL
39087 – AAUSAT3
39088 – SAPPHIRE
39089 – NEOSSAT
39090 – STRAND 1
39091 – CANX 3A (BRITE-ASRA)
39092 – CANX 3B (UNIBRITE)
39093 – PSLV R/B
39094 – PSLV DEB

Due to catalog requirements, which requires payloads to be listed prior to the rocket body and another launch debris, objects 39086, 39087, 39092, 39093, and 39094 had to be shifted to be placed in proper sequence.

Elsets were shifted as follows:
39086 was moved to 39093 (PSLV R/B)
39087 was moved to 39094 (PSLV DEB)
39092 was moved to 39086 (SARAL)
39093 was moved to 39087 (AAUSAT3)
39094 was moved to 39092 (CANX 3B)

NORAD Keps/TLEs for recent satellites

Radio Amateur receives STRaND-1 Smartphone Satellite in Brazil

AMSAT-UK_Bevelled_LogoRoland Zurmely PY4ZBZ in Brazil has received the 437.568 MHz telemetry signal from the STRaND-1 smartphone satellite launched on Monday, February 25.

See his STRaND-1 telemetry page in Google English at http://tinyurl.com/cf8l8n4

Page in Portugese http://www.qsl.net/py4zbz/strand.htm

Information on decoding the STRaND-1 amateur radio telemetry beacon

RadFxSat/Fox-1B Amateur Radio CubeSat Proposal Accepted by NASA

AMSAT FOX

AMSAT-NA reports that the RadFxSat/Fox-1B proposal has been accepted by NASA. Tony Monteiro AA2TX writes:

I am pleased to announce that our NASA ELaNa proposal for RadFxSat/Fox-1B has been accepted.

Here is the NASA announcement. Note that the projects are listed in alphabetical order, not priority order. Look for “Vanderbilt and AMSAT.”
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2013/feb/HQ_13-064_CubeSat_4.html

We requested a launch in 2014.

STRaND-1 Amateur Radio Beacon – New Type with Message

Dr Susan Jason working on STRaND-1

Tweets from Surrey Space Centre @SpaceAtSurrey regarding #STRaND-1.

We have a new beacon type out at the moment – and it has a message in it! See if you can receive it 😀

First to pick it up gets … free STRaND-1 stickers!

STRaND-1 437.568 MHz telemetry information

General STRaND-1 information

Decoding the STRaND-1 amateur radio telemetry beacon

STRaND-1 PSLV-C20 Launch - Image credit ISRO

STRaND-1 PSLV-C20 Launch – Image credit ISRO

STRaND-1 carries an amateur radio AX.25 packet radio downlink on 437.568 MHz using 9600 bps FSK modulated data with HDLC frame, NRZI encoding.

Dr Chris Bridges would be delighted to receive all available telemetry files by email to C.P.Bridges@surrey.ac.uk

Excel Spreadsheet of STRaND-1 Telemetry Format_20130327

On the AMSAT Bulletin Board Mark Hammond N8MH has provided these tips to decode STRaND-1:

(1) Sprint-2 TNC set at 9600 baud in KISS mode (or any 9600 in KISS mode probably)

(2) Using this software to capture:
http://www.dk3wn.info/files/online_kiss_plus.zip

(3) And using this software to decode the captured KISS files:
http://www.dk3wn.info/files/kissdump.zip

Thanks to Mike Rupprecht DK3WN for the excellent software.

Jan PE0SAT describes how he used the free TNC emulator software AGWPE and SDR# to decode the telemetry. This approach means you don’t have to buy a dedicated hardware TNC it simply uses your existing PC and radio that supports 9600 bps data:

(1) Record a pass using SDR# and a FUNcube Dongle Pro+ and save the IQ wav file so you can work with it after the pass.
(2) Configure AGW Packet Engine (AGWPE) as a 9600 baud modem using your audio mixer as input. If you don’t have an audio mixer, use audio VAC to route the received audio to the AGW audio input.
(3) When the AGW packet engine is running use AGW-Online-KISS from DK3WN to connect to the packet engine and decode the telemetry.
(4) Open the IQ wav file within SDR# and playback the recorded file and tune to the correct receive frequency, now you can see decoded data within Online-Kiss.
(5) Feed the files captured to KISS-Dump

STRaND-1 Ground Station Antennas

STRaND-1 Ground Station Antennas

Descriptions of ONLINE KISS +, AGW ONLINE KISS and KISS Dump + are at http://tinyurl.com/SatSoftwareDK3WN/

The free AGWPE soundcard packet software AGWPE.zip is available at http://www.sv2agw.com/downloads/

Guide on how to use AGWPE http://www.soundcardpacket.org/

Tracking Information

Free satellite tracking software:
• SimpleSat Look Down http://www.tomdoyle.org/SimpleSatLookDown/
• Gpredict http://gpredict.oz9aec.net/
• Orbitron http://www.amsat-uk.org/?p=9051

Keplerian Two Line Elements (TLE’s) ‘Keps’