Vega Amateur Radio CubeSats PW-Sat, Masat-1 and Robusta
ESA’s Education Office is inviting the CubeSat community to send their notifications of interest for a new initiative involving the development of educational picosatellites and the provision of deployers and launch services. The call closes on 7 September 2012.
This video presentation describes a CubeSat with an Ion Drive that in 2013 could travel to the Moon.
Aeneas – University of Southern California
The launch of the amateur radio CubeSats on an Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base has been postponed until at least Tuesday, August 14.
The Carpcomm Space Network aims to brings together ham radio operators, university ground stations and interested people around the world to form a global space communication network.
An English language NHK TV news story covers the amateur radio CubeSat FITSAT-1 also known as NIWAKA which launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on July 21.
Takushi Tanaka JA6AVG and FITSAT
FITSAT-1 has multiple downlinks, CW on 437.250 MHz, AX.25 on 437.445 MHz and a 4 watt high speed data transmitter on 5840 MHz capable of sending a 640 by 480 pixel VGA JPEG image in 6 seconds.
In addition it carries high power LEDs that will be driven with 100W pulses to produce extremely bright flashes. These, it is hoped, will be observable by the unaided eye or with small binoculars. Both the 5840 MHz and optical downlinks have a high power consumption so they may only be activated when in range of the ground station in Japan. It use a neodymium magnet for attitude control.
The CubeSat will remain on the ISS until September when it will be deployed by Japanese astronaut and radio amateur Akihiko Hoshide KE5DNI using the ISS Kibo robot arm.
FITSAT-1 (NIWAKA) is mounted in a JEM-Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) with the amateur radio TechEdSat and F-1 CubeSats. In a second deployment pod are WeWish and a scientific 2U CubeSat Raiko. The CubeSats will be deployed into a 400 km orbit and should have a lifetime of 3 or 4 months before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere and burning up.
In this video NHK interviews Takushi Tanaka JA6AVG and students from the Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT) about the project.
Watch NHK – Tiny Satellites, Big Possibilities
FITSAT-1 information, pictures and deployment movie http://www.fit.ac.jp/~tanaka/fitsat.shtml
Kibo Robot Arm http://kibo.jaxa.jp/en/about/kibo/rms/
FITSAT-1 plans to use LED’s to signal in Morse code
Digital designs for real, physical objects. A Universe of Things!
Full Instructions can be found here
This is a full scale (moderately simplified) 3D printer-ready copy of the ArduSat, the wildly successful Kickstarter.com satellite for personal space exploration (received $106,330 funding, 3X their original goal!).
I am a supporter of the project, and have worked closely with Joel Spark (provided the original stl files) of the ArduSat team to create the first 3D print of this online. My daughter will be doing a week of ArduSat space science in 2013 when this launches (proud
Dad).
AMSAT-UK 
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