Tag Archives: CubeSat

Jan 6 2014

UKube-1 in SatMagazine

SatMagazine January 2014The January 2014 issue of SatMagazine features the UKube-1 CubeSat built at Clyde Space in Glasgow. UKube-1 carries an amateur radio 435/145 MHz linear transponder for SSB/CW communications and should launch later this year.

The magazine also covers some of the many other CubeSats launched recently including Cape-2, KySat-2, ChargerSat-2, Trailblazer, TJ3SAT, DragonSat-1, COPPER and PhoneSat. There is also an article on the upcoming launch of the Planet Labs constellation of twenty eight 3U CubeSats.

Download the January 2014 SatMagazine from http://www.satmagazine.com/2014/SM_Jan2014.pdf

UK CubeSat Forum https://amsat-uk.org/2013/12/19/announcing-the-uk-cubesat-forum/

Jan 3 2014

High Resolution Data available on FUNcube Data Warehouse

Sun Sensors

Sun Sensors

As promised, we are making the FUNcube-1 (AO-73) CubeSat High Resolution Data available for download from the Data Warehouse.

It contains Hi-Res data generated every hour, on the hour for the 60 minutes preceding the extract.

Please note that unlike the Whole Orbit Data, the Hi-Res data may be incomplete (have significant gaps) because of a lack of ground stations on the ground track.

Now that we have the WOD and Hi-Res extracts working, we are going to move on to the RealTime extract.

Please provide any feedback on the FUNcube forum.

73 and Happy New Year,

Dave, G4DPZ

FUNcube-1 High Resolution Data https://warehouse.funcube.org.uk/highres.html?satelliteId=2

Data Warehouse – Telemetry Archive http://warehouse.funcube.org.uk/

Dashboard App – Telemetry Decoder http://funcube.org.uk/working-documents/funcube-telemetry-dashboard/

Dec 28 2013

Lithuanian CubeSats launch next month

LY2013SAT QSL card received by Andy Thomas G0SFJ

LY2013SAT QSL card received by Andy Thomas G0SFJ

To celebrate the upcoming launch of LituanicaSAT-1 the special event station LY2013SAT operated by Vilmantas Morkunas LY3BY has been on the air. Andy Thomas G0SFJ was one of the those who worked it and he was rewarded with a QSL card showing LituanicaSAT-1 in space.

Kibo Robot Arm CubeSat Deployment

Kibo Robot Arm CubeSat Deployment

Two Lithuanian amateur radio satellites will be among the 32 CubeSats to be sent by Nanoracks LLC to the International Space Station (ISS) on the SpaceX CRS-3 mission in January, 2014.

They will be deployed from the ISS by the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The Kaunas University of Technology developed LituanicaSAT-1 and the Lithuanian Space Federation developed LitSat-1. It is understood that both will carry amateur radio transponders.

The satellites were built in 2013 which was the 80th anniversary of the historic flight by Lithuanian pilots Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas in the airplane Lituanica. On July 15, 1933, they took off from Floyd Bennett Field in New York and flew across the Atlantic Ocean, covering a distance of 6,411 kilometers without landing, in 37 hours and 11 minutes. Tragically they crashed by the village of Kuhdamm, near Soldin, Germany just 650 km from their destination of Kaunas in Lithuania.

The IARU coordinated frequencies for the two CubeSats are:

LituanicaSAT-1
• FM Transponder Uplink 145.950 MHz Downlink 435.180 MHz
• AX25 Uplink 145.850 MHz AX25 Downlink 437.550 MHz
• CW Beacon 437.275 MHz
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lituanicasat1

LitSat-1
• SSB Transponder Uplink 435.180 MHz Downlink 145.950 MHz
• AX25 Uplink 437.550 MHz Downlink 145.850 MHz
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/palydovas

Google English article on the two Lithuanian CubeSats http://tinyurl.com/LithuanianCubeSats

1933 Lituanica flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanica

Dec 27 2013

SkySat-1 satellite sends first HD video

Ching-Yu Hu - Skybox Imaging

Ching-Yu Hu – Skybox Imaging

Skybox Imaging was founded in 2009 by radio amateur Julian Mann KI6OSO along with Ching-Yu Hu, Dan Berkenstock and John Fenwick.

Many of the Skybox Imaging executives worked on CubeSat projects while students at Stanford University under Professor Bob Twiggs KE6QMD.

SkySat-1, the first in a planned constellation of 24 microsatellites, was launched on a Dnepr from Dombarovsky near Yasny on November 21, 2013. It is believed to be the smallest satellite ever flown that is capable of capturing imagery at better than 1 meter resolution and the 1080p HD camera can capture up to 90 second video clips at 30 frames per second.

Watch World’s First High-Resolution, HD Video of Earth from Space (1080p HD)

Skybox Imaging http://www.skyboximaging.com/

Dec 27 2013

Changes to FUNcube Data Warehouse Upload

AMSAT-UK FUNcube Mission Patch Rev4 20100609

AMSAT-UK FUNcube Mission Patch

We are extremely grateful to all the groups and individuals who have uploaded FUNcube-1 (AO-73) data to the warehouse and the totals on the upload ranking page are quite amazing.

Since launch we have been monitoring the service which receives, processes and stores that data and now are about to make some changes to it to improve it performance and reliability.

The first change is to introduce an acceptance time window for packets uploaded from the Dashboard. This restricts packets to those whose sequence numbers are within +/- 48 hours of the latest sequence number stored in the Data Warehouse. We are doing this for two reasons:

We have received erroneous packets whose sequence numbers are significantly different to the latest value. To reduce the chance of double scoring of points when we release stored data back to the user community

The second change, which will not affect normal operation but will improve scoring:

We currently process packets immediately they arrive at the server. Under load, this can cause us to lose a few packet scores because of contention in the database. To alleviate this problem, we are going to change the processing slightly to process packets through a buffer. This buffer will be processed every 5 seconds, so there will be a slight delay before packets are acknowledged on the ranking.

73 Dave, G4DPZ

Dashboard App – Telemetry Decoder http://funcube.org.uk/working-documents/funcube-telemetry-dashboard/

Data Warehouse – Telemetry Archive http://warehouse.funcube.org.uk/

Dec 25 2013

Updated Dashboard Software now available

FUNcube-1 last test dashboard frameThe FUNcube Team are pleased to announce the latest version of the Dashboard Software.

Version 814 can be downloaded from http://funcube.org.uk/working-documents/funcube-telemetry-dashboard/

We thank everyone for their interest and reports of the success of FUNcube-1 (AO-73) and we look forward to continued operations.

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas
73 The FUNcube Project Team