Fatima Dyczynski CEO and Director of Xoterra Space

25 year-old Fatima Dyczynski, CEO, founder and project manager of Xoterra Space, was an Aerospace Engineer, thought leader, scientist, creative space enthusiast, motivated entrepreneur, public speaker, all world traveler and absolute futurist.

She perished July 17, 2014 on flight MH-17 over Ukraine.

Fatima was Operations Engineer for the Delfi-n3Xt CubeSat which carried an amateur radio linear transponder. Delfi-n3Xt was successfully launched in November 2013.

She presented the paper ‘A novel business model to substantiate the commercial viability of a CubeSat constellation for advanced Earth Observation and monitoring’ at the International Astronautical Federation Conference 2013 (IAC-13) in Beijing and had been planning to present a paper this September at IAC-14 in Canada.

It is reported her ultimate dream was to journey to Mars as an astronaut.

Watch Let’s make space personal: Fatima Dyczynski at TEDxGroningen 2013

Xoterra Space http://www.xoterraspace.com/the-team/

Vibrant life of young space engineer cut short on MH17 flight
http://www.smh.com.au/world/vibrant-life-of-young-space-engineer-cut-short-on-mh17-flight-20140720-zv0wy.html

Delfi-n3Xt https://amsat-uk.org/2013/11/23/delfi-n3xt-update-november-22/

Delfi-n3Xt Satellite

Delfi Nanosatellite Program Manager, Jasper Bouwmeester PC4JB, has announced that the team plan to activate the Delfi-n3Xt satellite’s 2405 MHz downlink on May 13-17, 2014.

Dear all,

It has been a while since you heard from us. We are still having problems to receive our satellite since our transponder test. We now want to try something different: trying to activate our S-band transmitter and let it transmit at full power for a pass. If we are able to receive a signal from the S-band, we know that Delfi-n3Xt still has an operational receiver and we could potentially demodulate the S-band signal. But since we already know that the latter is difficult, the first focus is just to “see” the signal. Since the satellite is still tumbling, it is a matter of link budget and statistics if we are able to catch the signal. To increase our chanceswe would like to ask the help of radio amateurs in the neighbourhood with suitable equipment. Since we have to actively command the satellite we have planned the passes which are suitable for the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Northern France and the availability of operators from our side. According to a quick survey, you are living in the area in reach at the selected passes.
The question to you:

Do you have S-band (2405 MHz) reception functionality with a dish of at least 2.5 meter and tracking capability and willing to follow and record one or more passes for us?

If so, please let us know your location, the gain of your antenna and the passes you are able to follow. Off course you do not have to be actively present during the pass. You can just record it and send the recording later through http://www.wetransfer.com.

Delfi-n3Xt will send at 2405 MHz +/- 100 kHz. The latter is the worst case uncertainty band, but I expect it to be pretty close to the right frequency. If you have an SDR, you can best set it at +/- 1 MHz around the centre frequency. Off course you do not have to be actively present during the pass. You can just record it

The planned attempts are stated by the LOCAL time of commanding below. If successful transmission would be within the 10-20 minutes after the indicated time.

– Tue 13-05 ~11.25h local time
– Wed 14-05 ~12:00h local time
– Thu 15-05 ~22:10h local time
– Fri 16-05 ~11:35h local time
– Sat 17-05 ~12:10h local time

If you are able, your help is highly appreciated!

Vy 73,
Jasper PC4JB
Email: Jasper.Bouwmeester <at> tudelft.nl

Delfi-n3Xt http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/radio-amateurs

Delfi-n3Xt Communication Subsystem http://www.delfispace.nl/delfi-n3xt/comms

Delfi-n3Xt Satellite

Delfi Nanosatellite Program Manager, Jasper Bouwmeester PC4JB, has announced the results of the testing carried out on the Delfi-n3Xt CubeSat 435/145 MHz linear transponder.

Dear radio amateurs,

Unfortunately, we have not heard anything from Delfi-n3Xt since Thursday 20/02 after our transponder test. During the transponder test we could hear our side beacon at 145.870 MHz and we were still able to switch back to normal transmission an back to transponder again (and also received the beacon the second time). Nothing seemed to be wrong, except for the transponder itself not properly working. The satellite was supposed to return to nominal operations in the next orbit.

We think that a hardware failure occurred either at the second half of the transponder orbit or during the mode switch. Since Friday we have made many attempts to revive the satellite. Since we have an independent radio, there was (and still is some) hope to get the satellite back in transmission. There are however a few points were common mode failures could occur: the phasing circuitry which connects both transmitters and an I2C buffer at the main bus side. We do however still have some hope that only one radio has failed and that we might still be able to command the satellite to use the other. Since all trivial command schemes did not work, next week we will only focus on a specific test to turn the transmitter on for a brief moment. During the weekend we saw some narrow band signal at 10 kHz below 145.870 MHz (+/- Doppler), which might potentially be related to the local oscillator. If we can reconstruct this a few times and clearly correlate this to Delfi-n3Xt (we do have a lot of intermitting noises sources in the neighbourhood) we at least know the OBC and one radio is still working and we can commence to next steps.

We appreciate everyone’s help to listen to Delfi-n3Xt to see if there is still some signal left. I think the best changes (besides Delft passes in which we try to command) are when the satellite comes just out of eclipse and is supposed to startup one of the transmitters. Please note that it has become very crowded with CubeSats lately, so any signals which are off in frequency (except for the -10 kHz tone), have a very different bandwidth and/or Doppler shift are very likely to be other satellites in the neighbourhood. Today we had for instance Delfi-C3 almost perfectly aligned sending at the same frequency. Delfi-n3Xt will only transmit at about 145.870 MHz.

If the situation changes, I will provide you with an update.

Best regards,

Jasper, PC4JB

IARU coordinated Delfi-n3Xt frequencies
• 145.870 MHz Telemetry
• 145.930 MHz Telemetry
• 2405.00 MHz High speed data
• Inverting SSB/CW transponder
– 435.530-435.570 MHz uplink LSB
– 145.880-145.920 MHz downlink USB

Telemetry reception http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/delfi-n3xt-telemetry-reception

Delfi-n3Xt http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/radio-amateurs

Dnepr Yasny launch https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/dnepr-november-2013/

Results of first Delfi-n3Xt transponder test
https://amsat-uk.org/2014/02/20/results-of-first-delfi-n3xt-transponder-test/

Delfi-n3Xt transponder to be tested
https://amsat-uk.org/2014/02/17/delfi-n3xt-transponder-to-be-tested/

Delfi-n3Xt Satellite

Delfi Nanosatellite Program Manager, Jasper Bouwmeester PC4JB, has announced results of the first test of the Delfi-n3Xt CubeSat 435/145 MHz linear transponder that were carried out on February 20.

Dear all,

Today we did a first transponder test. We could hear the beacon, but unfortunately did not hear anything back from our calls. Also we were missing the noise floor of the transponder band. Our hypothesis is that our adjustable LO (Si570) which is mixed with the IF band could not be programmed correctly and hence the pass-band goes outside our filtered band (which is a good thing, because we do not want to transmit on illegal frequencies). This LO is adjustable by I2C communication and should be programmed each time at power up (so each time the transponder mode is activated. We will do two attempts more on Friday, February 20 at the morning ground passes and even if that doesn’t help we will keep on trying with different settings. If the situation changes I will update you again.

Best regards,

Jasper, PC4JB

IARU coordinated Delfi-n3Xt frequencies
• 145.870 MHz Telemetry
• 145.930 MHz Telemetry
• 2405.00 MHz High speed data
• Inverting SSB/CW transponder
– 435.530-435.570 MHz uplink LSB
– 145.880-145.920 MHz downlink USB

Telemetry reception http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/delfi-n3xt-telemetry-reception

Delfi-n3Xt http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/radio-amateurs

Dnepr Yasny launch https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/dnepr-november-2013/

Delfi-n3Xt Satellite

Delfi Nanosatellite Program Manager, Jasper Bouwmeester PC4JB, has announced tests for Feb 20-21 of the Delfi-n3Xt 435/145 MHz linear transponder for amateur radio SSB/CW communications.

UPDATE February 20, 2014

Dear all,

Today we did a first transponder test. We could hear the beacon, but unfortunately did not hear anything back from our calls. Also we were missing the noise floor of the transponder band. Our hypothesis is that our adjustable LO (Si570) which is mixed with the IF band could not be programmed correctly and hence the pass-band goes outside our filtered band (which is a good thing, because we do not want to transmit on illegal frequencies). This LO is adjustable by I2C communication and should be programmed each time at power up (so each time the transponder mode is activated. We will do two attempts more tomorrow at the morning ground passes and even if that doesn’t help we will keep on trying with different settings. If the situation changes I will update you again.

Best regards,

Jasper, PC4JB

Jasper’s earlier email read:

Dear radio amateurs,

It has been a while since we have provided an update, so it is time to brief you again.

Delfi-n3Xt Status

The satellite is doing fine and is in healthy shape. We are now almost 3 months in orbit and have fulfilled a major part of the primary mission objectives. This means that we are close to a mission success. This does not mean that everything works flawlessly as there are several subsystems with issues. Given the amount of payloads and new technologies, I can only say that this was to be expected and accounted for in the mission. Delfi satellites are developing platforms and Delfi-n3Xt is an in-orbit test facility. The good thing is that issues encountered are not even a final verdict on the subsystems performance. The attitude determination and control subsystem currently is hampered by a high magnetic noise, but might still be tweaked and tune to see if we can get it to work properly. This however takes some time, so we are glad that the satellite seems to be in healthy state and we can take more time to experiment with it.

DUDe

We are still working on an improved version of DUDe to tackle several issues which we and many of you have discovered and reported. Unfortunately, many of these issues are more difficult to tackle than anticipated and will still take a while before we can release a new solid version of DUDe. One of the main issues is the fact that the software freezes after receiving noise for some time, meaning that DUDe needs to be restarted each time. Attached is a version of DUDe with a dirty fix which resets the PLL every minute. The penalty is that a 1 or 2 frames are lost each minute, so the performance is less than version 5.1. It is however much more convenient for automated ground stations (like our own) and therefore we decided to release this version.

Transponder

We are going to test the transponder functionality of Delfi-n3Xt this week. I have to be honest that this functionality was implemented last minute on the satellite and was only tested briefly in a non-representative setup. I therefore estimate the chance that it will work at 50/50.

Our first test series will be:

Thursday 20-02-2014 at about 10:50 UT

Friday 21-02-2014 at about 9:50 UT

Friday 21-02-2014 at about 11:25 UT

After a few initial tests, and provided that it works, you are free to use the transponder for communication. We will leave it in this mode for the remainder of the sunlit part of the orbit, so only in Europe and Africa it is possible to use this mode for now. If successful we will turn on the transponder more often and for longer periods of time such that everyone can enjoy it.

[Inverting SSB/CW transponder
• 435.530-435.570 MHz uplink LSB
• 145.880-145.920 MHz downlink USB]

S-band Transmitter

There seems to be a problem on the S-band transmitter causing the current protection to kick in occasionally. Maybe this is due to charging or some other effect, as the board is not protected by The Onboard Computer leaves the transmitter off after several attempts as part of an internal safety mechanism. We can still turn on the S-band transmitter through telecommand, but this will only last for a few passes. Most cases the S-band transmitter will thus be off and it reporting that we have turned it might not be very effective since it might be off again by the time you read the message. If you are still interested to try and receive the beacon signal of the S-band, please check the regular telemetry in DUDe under ‘Status’ ’Satellite Status’ ‘Subsystem Status STX’ to see if it is actually on.

J. (Jasper) Bouwmeester PC4JB, MSc.
Delfi Nanosatellite Program Manager &
Researcher Small Satellite Technology
Chair of Space Systems Engineering
Delft University of Technology

IARU coordinated Delfi-n3Xt frequencies
• 145.870 MHz Telemetry
• 145.930 MHz Telemetry
• 2405.00 MHz High speed data
• Inverting SSB/CW transponder
– 435.530-435.570 MHz uplink LSB
– 145.880-145.920 MHz downlink USB

Telemetry reception http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/delfi-n3xt-telemetry-reception

Delfi-n3Xt http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/radio-amateurs

Dnepr Yasny launch https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/dnepr-november-2013/

Delfi-n3Xt Satellite

Delfi Nanosatellite Program Manager, Jasper Bouwmeester PC4JB, provides this update on the Delfi-n3Xt amateur radio satellite which was launched November 21 and carries a 435/145 MHz linear transponder.

Dear radio amateurs,

Today, December 19, we have switched from the ISIS transmitter (ITRX) to the Primary Transmitter (PTRX). This radio seems to have a significantly stronger signal, so it should be easier to receive telemetry. The frequency is a bit higher, 145.930 MHz so you will have to retune. I hope this will help some of the radio amateurs who had trouble in decoding Delfi-n3Xt.

We have also put the S-band transmitter (STX) back in beacon mode on 2405.000 MHz. As the onboard patch antenna is however pointing in arbitrary direction, it is a matter of luck if it is pointed towards a ground station. In about 10% of the passes it should in theory be possible to receive the signal with a >2.5m dish, but I have to admit that it is only going to be fun to try to receive the signal for those people who like to be the first and have the proper equipment.

Unfortunately we have not yet been able to make a new update of the DUDe client. The first issue we want to tackle for the new version is the frequency freeze. After a while, DUDe seems to lock itself at an edge of the band. Currently this means, that DUDe needs to be restarted before a pass. As temporary solution in case you want to track the satellite automatically, you may use an auto-mouse clicker to close and re-open DUDe. But I hope we will be able to fix this issue early next year.

Finally, I would like to state that you may replay your SDR recordings a few times to increase packet decoding as our server can handle more load. Our statistics page however currently does not exclude doubles from a single radio amateur, so please keep in mind that the packet counts for the competition (more details early next year) will eventually be corrected for this. It will take a while though before we upgrade the statistics to exclude doubles from a single radio amateur. We are very happy if we receive more telemetry packets, but please don’t exaggerate the amount of replays as there is not much more to be gained after a few attempts.

Have a nice holidays and a prosperous 2014!

73,
Jasper, PC4JB

Telemetry reception http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/delfi-n3xt-telemetry-reception

Delfi-n3Xt http://www.delfispace.nl/operations/radio-amateurs

Dnepr Yasny launch https://amsat-uk.org/satellites/dnepr-november-2013/