Tag Archives: CubeSat

Mar 13 2012

New Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination Request Form

Hans van de Groenendaal ZS6AKV

Hans van de Groenendaal ZS6AKV

IARU Satellite Advisor Hans van de Groenendaal ZS6AKV has made available a new version of the Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination request form.

Frequency coordination for amateur radio satellites is provided by the IARU through its Satellite Advisor, an official appointed by the IARU Administrative Council, its top policymaking body.

The IARU Satellite Advisor is assisted by an Advisory Panel of qualified amateurs from all three IARU Regions. The panel meets regularly via Skype to consider amateur satellite frequency coordination requests for satellites planned for operation on frequencies in the amateur service. The panel members often provide advice and assist satellite builders with the selection of   the best possible frequencies to meet the objectives of their mission.

The Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination request form has been updated (Version 27) and is available for download from http://www.iaru.org/satellite.

On the IARU web satellite page there are also available a number of guideline documents which will assist satellite builders, including a document on the ITU requirements for Amateur Radio Satellites.

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Hans van de Groenendaal ZS6AKV
IARU Satellite Advisor

A list of coordinated amateur radio satellites can be found at http://www.amsat.org.uk/iaru

Mar 12 2012

GOMX-1 to test CubeSat Space Protocol

GOMX-1 is a student built amateur radio 2U CubeSat. The mission is being flown under the auspices of a Government research grant covering space related radio research. It will qualify a number of subsystems and provide extensive in-flight data.

A large number of future amateur/educational CubeSat missions depend on the important data that will be generated by this mission. This will help these mission teams across the globe to achieve higher reliability and improved utilization.

The mission will also test the use of the open source Cubesat Space Protocol (http://code.google.com/p/cubesat-space-protocol/) for a complete mission including the space link.

A camera payload will take color images of the Earth and an experimental Software Defined Radio receiver will be carried and its performance characterized.

More than 15 students at Aalborg University have been actively involved in the development of this payload as part of their semester projects.

It is planning to use GMSK telemetry with selectable 1k2/2k4/4k8/9k6 rates on UHF with approx 28dBm power to a deployed antenna. Launch is expected in late 2012 into a near sun syncronous orbit on a DNEPR rocket from Yasny in Russia with a number of other amateur radio satellites,  see Gunter’s Space Page http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_chr/lau2012.htm

GOMspace http://gomspace.com/

Mar 11 2012

Radio Amateur Encourages Engineering as a Career

Ali Guarneros Luna KJ6TVO has been involved in the development of the amateur radio CubeSat TechEdSat. In this video she talks to teenagers at a Careers Night about her aspiration to become an engineer.

Watch Career Night – Ali Luna

Ali Guarneros Luna KJ6TVO was born in Mexico City and now lives in San Jose, California. She received her BS in Aerospace Engineering at San Jose State University in 2010 and will complete her MS in Aerospace Engineering from San Jose State University in 2012.

She currently works with the Edison Program, Small Spacecraft Payload and Technologies (SSPT) and SPHERES National Lab at NASA Ames Research Center. Under the Edison Program, Ali works on development of CubeSat projects, including TechEdSat, as the System Engineering, Mission And Ground Operations, and Launch Vehicle Service expert.

Under the Small Spacecraft Payload and Technologies Program, Ali works as Engineering Support for different missions, most currently in NLAS. At SPHERES National Lab, Ali works as Engineer support for Ground Lab and Operation Support.

Mar 10 2012

RAX-2 Success – Anomaly Detected

RAX-2 Detects Comms-Disrupting Anomaly

RAX-2 Detects Communication-Disrupting Anomaly http://rax.sri.com/

Matt Bennett KF6RTB reports that the amateur radio CubeSat, Radio Auroral Explorer 2 (RAX-2), has detected the communication-disrupting anomaly in the upper atmosphere it was searching for. The team have expressed their thanks to the amateur radio community.

RAX-2 was built by students at the University of Michigan. The primary objective of the mission is to use the onboard radar receiver in conjunction with a powerful radar station in Alaska to study the formation of a plasma anomaly known for causing the scintillation of radio signals in the UHF and higher bands. This scintillation effect is known to inhibit our space radar tracking capabilities and ground-space communications. Studying this anomaly in this bi-static radar configuration (ground based transmitter, space-base receiver) will provide scientists with a better understanding of these anomalies that has not been achievable with ground radars alone.

Late on Friday, March 9, Matt KF6RTB announced the news:

This is unbelievable!! After more than three years of hard work and dedication by my team and professor at Michigan, our chief scientist confirmed today that the RAX-2 spacecraft we designed, built, and launched into space has detected the communication-disrupting anomaly in the upper atmosphere that we’ve been looking for!! Cheers guys, we did it!!! GO guys, we did it!!! GO BLUE!!!! [Michigan Athletics battle cry]

The RAX Team would like to acknowledge and say thank you to the amateur radio satellite community for all of their support on this mission. We’ve really enjoyed interacting with fellow operators while collecting and analyzing telemetry. We’ve also learned a great deal about satellite operations from each other.

RAX-2: 437.345 MHz, 9600 bps GMSK http://rax.engin.umich.edu/

Mission Science Operations http://rax.sri.com/

RAX on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RadioAuroraExplorer

2010 – RAX-1 CubeSat launch announcement http://www.southgatearc.org/news/november2010/rax_launch.htm

2011 – RAX-2 CubeSat Launch http://www.southgatearc.org/news/october2011/successful_amateur_cubesat_launch.htm

Mar 8 2012

Connecting Students with Space

The GENSO project features in an article in the February 2012 edition of the free magazine ESA Bulletin.

GENSO is a worldwide network of education and amateur radio ground stations linked together via the internet.

Student satellite teams can normally only gather around 20 minutes of data per day from their satellite using their own ground station. GENSO will give them free access to potentially hundreds of stations around the globe and increase their data return to many hours per day. It will also allow them to command their spacecraft from the other side of the world.

A team from AMSAT-UK supported this project by developing a standard ground station specification together with a full set of software drivers for the different hardware items.

The software development was carried out in a cooperative effort of students and radio amateurs worldwide.

The 2008 AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium featured a demonstration and presentations on GENSO.

The five page article starts on page 39 and the amateur radio stations of Graham Shirville G3VZV, Dave Johnson G4DPZ and David Mynatt KA0SWT get a brief mention on page 43. Read the ESA Bulletin online at

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/publications/ESA-Bulletin-149/

AMSAT-UK and ESA co-operation on GENSO
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/november2007/amsat_esa_genso_cooperation.htm

GENSO http://www.genso.org/

Mar 8 2012

AMSAT-UK Colloquium 2012 First Call for Speakers

Holiday Inn Guildford GU2 7XZ

Holiday Inn Guildford GU2 7XZ

The AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium will be held on September 15-16, 2012 in Guildford.

The Colloquium attracts an international audience from across Europe as well as North America and the Middle East. Attendees range from the builders of the CubeSats and Nanosats, those who communicate through them and beginners who wish to find out more about this fascinating branch of the hobby.

It provides a rare opportunity to chat with satellite designers and builders, discussions frequently continue until the early hours of the morning.

A Gala dinner is held on the Saturday evening along with the fund raising auction.

This is the first call for speakers for the AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium 2012 which, due to the Olympic & Paralympic Games, will be held this year on the weekend of September 15-16, 2012 at the Holiday Inn, Guildford, GU2 7XZ, United Kingdom.

This Colloquium will take place a few weeks before the planned launch of AMSAT-UK’s FUNcube-1 satellite carrying a 435/145 MHz linear transponder for SSB/CW communications.

AMSAT-UK invites speakers, to cover topics about micro-satellites, CubeSats, Nanosats, space and associated activities, for this event.

They are also invited to submit papers for subsequent publishing on the AMSAT-UK web site. We normally prefer authors to present talks themselves rather than having someone else give them in the authors’ absence. We also welcome “unpresented” papers for the web site.

We appreciate that it is not always possible to give a firm indication of attendance at this stage but expressions of interest would be appreciated.

Submissions should be sent *ONLY* to G4DPZ, via the following routes:

e-mail: david dot johnson at blackpepper dot co dot uk

Postal address at http://www.qrz.com/db/G4DPZ

AMSAT-UK also invite anyone with requests for Program Topics to submit them as soon as possible to G4DPZ. Invitations for any papers on specific subjects will be included in the future call. Likewise if anyone knows of a good speaker, please send contact and other information to G4DPZ.

AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium http://www.uk.amsat.org/colloquium/twelve