NASA announced Monday that AMSAT’s Fox-1 FM transponder spacecraft has been assigned a launch in 2014. For details on the launch vehicle, targeted launch date, orbit specifics, and more, please attend the AMSAT Forum and visit the AMSAT booth at the Dayton Hamvention this weekend. Watch http://www.amsat.org/ and the AMSAT News Service for more details to follow as they become available.
AMSAT’s Fox-1 CubeSat aims to provide these features:
• Fox-1 is designed to operate in sunlight without batteries once the battery system fails. This applies lessons learned from AO-51 and ARISSat-1 operations.
• In case of IHU failure Fox-1 aims to continue to operate its FM repeater in a basic, ‘zombie sat’ mode, so that the repeater remains on-the-air.
• Fox-1 is designed as the immediate replacement for AO-51. Its U/V (Mode B) FM transponder will make it even easier to work with modest equipment.
• From the ground user’s perspective, the same FM amateur radio equipment used for AO-51 may be used for Fox-1.
The 2013 AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium will start late afternoon on Friday, July 19 and will run through until the afternoon on Sunday, July 21 at the Holiday Inn, Guildford, GU2 7XZ, UK.
It will be preceded by an exciting “Hands-on” CubeSat Workshop which will take place at the nearby University of Surrey on the Friday and this will be followed, at the hotel, by the usual Colloquium “Beginners Session” in the late afternoon.
A number of keynote presentations have already been arranged for the Colloquium. These include Alistair Scott, the President of the British Interplanetary Society. The BIS has, over many decades, developed ideas and concepts about the future of space travel and both Patrick Moore and Arthur C Clarke were members. Alistair has had many years experience working in the space industry and will be reviewing the future possibilities for ventures into space both small and large. The BIS is presently developing one of the Sprites for the Kicksat mission and Andrew Vaudin will be presenting a paper about this and also providing a demonstration.
STRaND-1 Engineering Model and Cleanroom SSC
It is anticipated that both the FUNcube-1 and FUNcube-2 missions will be launched later this year and the FUNcube team will be on hand to talk about the missions and the planned educational outreach. A full demonstration of the Engineering Model, which has been performing flawlessly for almost a year, will also be provided.
On the Sunday, the General Manager of the RSGB, Graham Coomber, G0NBI will be talking about the Society’s vision of the future of amateur radio and how amateur satellites can play a major part in helping to secure that future.
We will also have updates on a number of the other current amateur satellite projects including HAMtv from the ISS, spectrum matters, operating methods, new products etc.
FUNcube-1 flight model – Image credit Wouter Weggelaar PA3WEG
There are still a few slots available for additional speakers, so if you would like to make a presentation, please contact Dave Johnson G4DPZ e-mail: dave at g4dpz dot me dot uk as soon as possible.
The AMSAT-UK organising committee looks forward to welcoming both regular attendees and newcomers – you can be assured of a warm welcome and an exciting weekend.
Vega VV02 lift-off from Kourou on May 7, 2013 at 02:06 UT
Estonia’s first CubeSat ESTCube-1, amateur radio callsign ES5E, was launched from Kourou in the Caribbean on May 7 at 0206 UT on an ESA Vega rocket into a 704 km orbit. Also on the same launch were Vietnam’s VNREDSat-1A and ESA’s Proba‑V satellites.
ESTCube-1 – Image credit University of Tartu
This Vega mission required five upper-stage boosts and lasted about twice as long as its first launch, in February 2012.
The three solid-propellant stages performed flawlessly and, after two burns of the liquid-propellant upper stage, Proba‑V was released into a circular orbit at an altitude of 820 km, over the western coast of Australia, some 55 minutes into flight.
After releasing Proba-V, the upper stage performed a third burn and the top half of the egg-shaped Vega Secondary Payload Adapter was ejected. After a fourth burn to circularize the orbit at an altitude of 704 km, VNREDSat-1A was released 1 hour 57 minutes into flight. ESTCube‑1 was ejected from its dispenser three minutes later.
ESTCube-1 was built by students at the University of Tartu. The main mission of the satellite is to test electric solar wind sail technology, a novel space propulsion technology that could revolutionize transportation within the solar system. It will deploy a 10 meter conductive electrodynamic tether and the force interacting with the tether will be measured.
ESTCube-1 at press conference in Tallinn before shipping January 21, 2013 – Image credit University of Tartu
The technology is based on the electrostatic interaction between the electric field generated by the satellite and the high-speed particles being ejected from the Sun. A spacecraft utilizing this method would first deploy a set of electrically charged wires, which allow to generate an electric field over a large area. This area effectively forms a “sail” that can be pushed by the charged particles by being diverted by it and therefore transferring momentum to the craft.
The team also aim to capture images of Estonia for outreach purposes.
OPUSAT is a 1U CubeSat designed and created by an OPU student team consisting of about 20 undergraduates and graduates at the Small Spacecraft Systems Research Center (SSSRC).
It is planning to use a 2 metre downlink for CW Beacon, 1k2 AFSK and 9k6 GMSK telemetry.
Mission Plans include
a. To operate technique of getting high power with Lithium-Ion Capacitor, control to the sun, and Maximum Power Point Tracking.
b. To open data of experiments on orbit and analytical software to the public.
c. To hold “competition of expecting object”.
d. To hold “competition of expecting the date of atmospheric entry
Planning for a 400 km circular 65 deg orbit with a launch by JAXA together with STARS-ⅡKagawa University,TeikyoSat-Teikyo University, ShindaiSat Shinshu University, INVADER Tama Art University and ITF-1 University of Tsukuba.
It is understood the primary payload is the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) due to launch in JFY 2013.
To save energy in the batteries of TURKSAT-3USAT satellite, unless announced otherwise, we kindly request you to;
1. When following the satellite, especially during daylight passings, concentrate on listening to the beacon signal at 437.225 MHz (with an open squelch, using preamp) only and send the info you have recorded to turksat3usat@tamsat.org.tr , together with time and location information.
2. Do not use the calling frequencies of the transponders (Uplink 145.940 – 145.990 MHz) and do not make any calls (TX) at these frequencies during this time.
3. Continue using existing TLE (Kepler) data in tracking the satellite, unless announced otherwise.
4. We thank all radio amateurs for their kind interest and help in this.
Pictures taken by the Graham and Bell PhoneSat satellites, deployed April 21, have been released.
Graham and Bell have been transmitting picture packets. Radio amateurs around the world have been receiving the individual packets and passing them to the PhoneSat team who have stitched them together to restore the complete Earth picture.
AMSAT-UK 
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