Tag Archives: Space

Mar 28 2012

Next ISS School contact -St Anthony’s Parish Primary School, Australia

Space station
Space station

 

03 April at 08:15 UTC

St Anthony’s Parish Primary School, Canberra, Australia – Dan Burbank, KC5ZSX

Telebridge station VK5ZAI in Australia will call NA1SS at approximately 08:15 UTC.

 

St Anthony’s School is located in the suburb of Wanniassa, which is part of the central region of the Tuggeranong Valley in the Australian Capital Territory. Currently the school has an enrolment of 528 students with generally three classes in each of 7 Year levels from Kindergarten (the first year of primary school in the ACT) to Year 6. Our average class size is 1 teacher to 26 students. We have a strong Integrated Unit of Inquiry programs that primarily focus on authentic experiences that the ARISS program would facilitate.

 

Students will ask as many of the following questions as time allows:
1. What is the most interesting thing you have ever seen out of the Space Station window?
2. What do you love most about outer space and miss about home?
3. What are the challenges you face in zero gravity?
4. If someone is injured, what do you do?
5. What is your job in outer space?
6. Is there enough light in space or do you need to use special glasses?
7. I live really close to Tidbinbilla Space Tracking Station. Is Tidbinbilla involved with this mission?
8. How long can you stay in space before it effects your health?
9. I know you can see the Great Wall of China, but can you see any other interesting landmarks on Earth?
10. What do you do in space to entertain yourself?

As always, the ISS will be audible to anyone listening in on the 145.80 MHz downlink.

*Note* – for telebridge contacts, the ground station will NOT be near the school that is contacting the ISS.

Please note, the amateur equipment on the ISS will be turned off prior to the beginning of the contact. It will be returned to service as quickly as possible.

 ARISS is an international educational outreach program partnering the participating space agencies, NASA, Russian Space Agency, ESA, CNES, JAXA, and CSA, with the AMSAT and IARU organizations from participating countries. ARISS offers an opportunity for students to experience the excitement of Amateur Radio by talking directly with crewmembers on-board the International Space Station. Teachers, parents and communities see, first hand, how Amateur Radio and crewmembers on ISS can energize youngsters’ interest in science, technology, and learning. Further information on the ARISS programme is available on the website http://www.rac.ca/ariss (graciously hosted by the Radio Amateurs of Canada). Information about the next scheduled ARISS contact can be found at http://www.rac.ca/ariss/upcoming.htm#NextContact.


Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Mar 27 2012

UKube-1: 4 payloads

Rt Hon David Willetts MP learns about UKube-1 visiting Clyde space, seeing the clean rooms and talking to Craig Clark about CubeSat components. Courtesy http://www.clyde-space.com/news/305_uk-science-minister-visits-clyde-space

 

The UK Space Agency’s pilot programme has narrowed down from a total of 20 proposals to four payloads to fly on Ukube-1 from UK industry and academia.

Payloads chosen include a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) Imager Demonstrator, a specialist imaging device to measure radiation damage in space developed by the Open University and Essex-based e2v technologies.

Another, the United Kingdom Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (UKSEDS) payload, myPocketQub442, is an open source system comprising five experiments, one of which will allow school pupils, university students and hobbyists to run their own experiments in space for a day.

The other two payloads are the EADS Astrium , which will test random number generation crucial to secure communications systems in the radiation environment, and TOPCAT http://www.bath.ac.uk/elec-eng/invert/topcat.html, a system designed by the University of Bath to measure space weather conditions which can adversely affect global positioning systems (GPS).

UKube-1 will also take an educational subsystem called FUNcube, developed by the voluntary organisation AMSAT-UK, to encourage young people to learn about radio, space, physics and electronics.

The spacecraft is being developed through a knowledge transfer project with Scottish spacecraft system developer Glasgow based Clyde Space and the University of Strathclyde, which Clyde Space is also funding.

One of the world’s leading firms in the micro spacecraft sector, dubbed CubeSat , Clyde Space has made components for about 40% of the 600 CubeSats launched globally so far. It also makes components for larger satellites.

Ukube-1 is also being funded by the UK Space Agency, the Technology Strategy Board and The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The agency is currently in negotiations to find a launch vehicle to take the Ukube-1 satellite into space.

UKSEDS – Students for the Exploration and Development of Space http://www.uk.amsat.org/4369

Bath TOPCAT Project http://www.uk.amsat.org/1612

Mar 26 2012

Apex students talk with space station

On Wednesday, March 21, students at Salem Elementary in Apex came together in the school’s multipurpose room for a once-in-a-lifetime event.

WRAL TV news reports that fourteen students, six of them winners of the school’s science fair a few weeks earlier, made their way onto the stage for their turn to ask a question of astronaut Don Pettit KD5MDT 241 miles (388 km) up and on the other side of the Earth aboard the International Space Station. Tony Hutchison VK5ZAI provided the telebridge link to the ISS amateur radio station NA1SS.

At 10:07 am EDT, the station came over the horizon of Southern Australia and ham radio volunteer Tony Huchison VK5ZAI called out to callsign NA1SS. Everyone relaxed a little bit when Pettit KD5MDT responded and students lined up to ask their questions one after another.

Watch the WRAL video

Read the full WRAL news report at http://www.wral.com/weather/blogpost/10904028/

ARISS ham radio space contact with Salem Elementary School, Apex, NC http://www.southgatearc.org/news/march2012/ariss_event_2103.htm

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) http://www.rac.ca/ariss/

Mar 23 2012

O/OREOS Mission: “Cost effective” CubeSat science

 

Astrobiology magazine posts a piece on the success of NASA’s O/OREOS mission that points out that serious science can be accomplished by tiny spacecraft:

‘The full success of the O/OREOS mission demonstrates convincingly that cubesats can be cost-effective platforms for performing science research and conducting technology demonstrations,’ said Mary Voytek, senior scientist of NASA’s Astrobiology Program at NASA Headquarters, in a statement from NASA. ‘The capabilities of cubesats are growing steadily, making them good candidates to operate precursor experiments for missions on larger satellites, the International Space Station, lunar surface exposure facilities, and planetary exploration.’

O/OREOS monitored the effects of the space environment on microorganism growth and metabolism in a high-inclination, low-Earth orbit.

Wayne

Image credit: NASA Ames

Mar 23 2012

O/OREOS Mission: "Cost effective" CubeSat science

 

Astrobiology magazine posts a piece on the success of NASA’s O/OREOS mission that points out that serious science can be accomplished by tiny spacecraft:

‘The full success of the O/OREOS mission demonstrates convincingly that cubesats can be cost-effective platforms for performing science research and conducting technology demonstrations,’ said Mary Voytek, senior scientist of NASA’s Astrobiology Program at NASA Headquarters, in a statement from NASA. ‘The capabilities of cubesats are growing steadily, making them good candidates to operate precursor experiments for missions on larger satellites, the International Space Station, lunar surface exposure facilities, and planetary exploration.’

O/OREOS monitored the effects of the space environment on microorganism growth and metabolism in a high-inclination, low-Earth orbit.

Wayne

Image credit: NASA Ames

Mar 17 2012

DEAD RUSSIAN SATELLITE TO FALL FROM SPACE

The Russian government will guide the large Express — AM4 telecommunications satellite, which was launched into a useless orbit in August, into a controlled atmospheric descent starting March 20 so that any surviving pieces will land in the Pacific Ocean, a senior official from Russia’s state-owned satellite telecommunications operator said March 15.

The 5,800-kilogram satellite has been stuck in a too-low orbit following the failure of the Breeze M upper stage of the Russian Proton rocket.

Dennis Pivnyuk, chief financial officer of the Russian Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC), which had planned to operate Express-AM4 for 15 years as part of its expansive development plan, said Russian authorities had considered and rejected multiple salvage scenarios for the satellite.

“We have decided to splash it between March 20 and March 26,” Pivnyuk said here during the Satellite 2012 conference. “While the satellite was not damaged, it has spent seven months in an orbit that exposes it to radiation that has left it in not good shape. There is not much lifetime left. We’ve reviewed different proposals from different entities, but none was really feasible.”

Express-AM4 was built by Astrium Satellites. Using its insurance payout from the loss of about $270 million, Moscow-based RSCC has ordered a replacement satellite, the Express-AM4R, which Astrium has promised to deliver in time for a launch in late 2013. Express-AM4 carried 63 active transponders in C-, Ku-, L- and Ka-bands.

Among the proposals submitted to Russian authorities for salvaging Express-AM4 was a bid by Polar Broadband Systems Ltd.

Former NASA human spaceflight chief William Readdy co-founded the Isle of Man-based company last year with the aim of repositioning Express-AM4 to provide researchers in Antarctica with 14-16 hours a day of broadband communications.

Readdy told Space News March 15 the company had not given up on persuading Russian authorities to reposition the satellite through a series of orbit-raising burns between the end of March and the beginning of June.

Polar Broadband Systems aims to sell Express-AM4 services to the U.S. National Science Foundation, which issued a request for information in April 2011 seeking industry recommendations for obtaining satellite-based broadband communications services for the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which is largely beyond the reach of Antarctica’s extremely limited satellite coverage.

Space News Deputy Editor Brian Berger contributed to this story.