[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index][JAMSAT Home]

[jamsat-news:3169] ANS-139 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins


AMSAT NEWS SERVICE
ANS-139

The AMSAT News Service bulletins are a free, weekly news and infor-
mation service of AMSAT North America, The Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation. ANS publishes news related to Amateur Radio in Space
including reports on the activities of a worldwide group of Amateur
Radio operators who share an active interest in designing, building,
launching and communicating through analog and digital Amateur Radio
satellites.

The news feed on http://www.amsat.org publishes news of Amateur
Radio in Space as soon as our volunteers can post it.

Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to:
ans-editor at amsat.org.

In this edition:

* AMSAT Fox-1 Launch Date Announced
* AMSAT At The Dayton Hamvention
* DARC and UBA Support Amateur Radio in Tunisia
* Frequencies announced for HamTV from the International Space Station
* AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium News
* Merritt Island High School StangSat Progress and Launch Date



SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-139.01
ANS-139 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 139.01
 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
May 19, 2013
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-139.01


AMSAT Fox-1 Launch Date Announced


NASA announced on May 13, 2013 that AMSAT’s Fox-1 spacecraft has been assigned
for launch in 2014 on the ELaNa XII mission. The expected orbit is 470 x 780 km
at 64 degrees inclination. This orbit has a lifetime of about 11 years.

AMSAT Vice President Engineering, Tony Monteiro, AA2TX, reported that the
software development team successfully brought up the Fox-1 system software on
the Internal Housekeeping Unit (IHU). The IHU is the brains of the Fox-1
satellite and it has a 32-bit, STM32L microprocessor. The operating IHU card was
shown in the AMSAT Engineering booth at the Dayton Hamvention.


The Fox-1 Engineering Team will deliver the satellite for integration with the
launch vehicle during May, 2014 with the launch scheduled for November, 2014.
Tony commented, “While this is later than we had hoped, it is well within the
normal variance of ELaNa launch dates and the extra time will be most welcome
for additional satellite testing. This is very exciting news and really puts the
focus on finishing the satellite and ground station software development.”


President Barry Baines says, “AMSAT’s focus on STEM education and development of
a cubesat platform capable of flying a science mission with a reliable
communications link resulted in the selection of Fox-1 in the third round and
RadFxSat (Fox-1B) in the fourth round of NASA’s Cubesat Launch Initiative.”


All Fox cubesats are designed to host advanced science payloads to support
future science missions that help us to continue qualify for NASA ELaNa (free)
launches. The Phase 1 Fox satellites are 1-Unit CubeSats. They each include an
analog FM repeater that will allow simple ground stations using an HT and an
“arrow” type antenna to make contacts using the satellite. This was the mode
made so popular by AO-51. The Phase 1 CubeSats also have the capability of
operating in a high-speed digital mode for data communications. Phase 2 Fox
satellites will include software-defined-transponders (SDX) like the one tested
on ARISSat-1. These will be able to operate in a wide variety of analog and
digital communications modes including linear transponders. Since this requires
more power for reliable operation, these will probably all be 3-Unit CubeSats.
Watch the AMSAT Journal and the AMSAT web (http://www.amsat.org) page for more
news and details.


[ANS thanks the AMSAT Fox Team for the above information ]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



AMSAT At The Dayton Hamvention



This is past week the really big show in Amateur Radio was the 2013 Hamvention near Dayton, Ohio.

AMSAT's theme this year at Dayton was "AMSAT - A View to the Future."

Thursday, 16 May, featured the third Annual AMSAT "Dinner at Tickets" party held
at Tickets Pub & Eatery in Fairborn, OH.


Friday, 17 May, concluded with the AMSAT/TAPR Banquet. The banquet is one of
the main AMSAT activities during the Hamvention at Dayton. The speaker this year
was Bruce Perens, K6BP, sharing the humorous history of technology evangelism:
"The Evangelist's Dilemma: Driving New Ideas With Nothing But Words."


Saturday, 18 May, included the opportuity to get the latest information about
what is going on with AMSAT and its projects at the AMSAT Forum including the
exciting news of the launch date announced by NASA for the Fox-1 Satellite.

Along with each day's featured activities every day included outside demos on
all available satellite passes. Meanwhile, inside at the AMSAT booth, the Fox-1
Internal Housekeeping Unit (IHU.), the brains of the Fox-1 satellite, and paper
models of the FOX-1 satellite where available for everyone to stop by and have a
look.


Other hardware was also available for purchase. AMSAT had a supply of the
popular V/U/WX receive preamplifiers at Dayton for display and sales. These
preamps came fully assembled, tested, and installed in a metal enclosure with
female BNC connectors on input and output and covers 100 MHz to 500 MHz which
includes the 137 MHz WX, 2M, and 70cm satellite bands. Full details and
schematic can be found in the November/December 2012 AMSAT Journal article by
Mark Spencer, WA8SME, or downloaded from the item in the Hardware section of the
AMSAT Store:
http://store.amsat.org/catalog/


Finally an updated LVB Tracker was shown at Dayton. AMSAT has sold the popular
G6LVB Tracker for several years. We now have a new version which replaces the
amber LCD display with an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display. The new
display offers a high visibility contrast with a wide angle of view. It will
be available in blue, green and amber. Current LVB Tracker owners may update
their own units or may send their LVB Tracker to WB8CXO for retrofit if they
don't wish to do the modifications themselves. Upgrading existing trackers will
be $50 + shipping. Contact WB8CXO@AMSAT.ORG for details.


[ANS thanks AMSAT's 2013 Dayton Committee, Tony, AA2TX, and Alan, WA4SCA, for the above information]


---------------------------------------------------------------------



DARC and UBA Support Amateur Radio in Tunisia


The Deutscher Amateur Radio Club, which is Germany's national amateur radio
society, reports that after the political changes in Tunisia amateur radio in
that North African country has a new opportunity to expand. This as members of
the Association of Tunisian Radio Amateurs used World Amateur Radio Day on April
18th to inform the that nations public and in particular its Minister for
Technology, Information and Communication about amateur radio in its various
forms.


Representatives of European amateur radio organizations were there to support
the event. This included the International Office of the Deutscher Amateur Radio
Club in the person of Mustapha Landoulsi, DL1BDF. Landoulsi gave a
presentation on the important role of amateur radio in emergency and disaster
situations.


Stefan Dombrowski, ON6TI, from the Belgian federation the U-B-A was also on
hand.  He explained the history of the development of amateur radio satellites,
and in particular, the construction of CubeSat spacecraft and the AMSAT-UK
FUNcube satellite.

According to reports, the Tunisian Minister was quite impressed by the potential
of amateur radio. As a result he has promised to ensure that the necessary
statutory basis for granting individual licenses would be created as soon as
possible.



[ANS thanks the Amateur Radio Newsline for the above information]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Frequencies announced for HamTV from the International Space Station



Frequencies have been announced for the new Ham Radio Digital TV transmitter that will send video from the ISS in the amateur radio 2400 MHz band.

The main mission of HamTV is to perform school contacts between the astronauts
onboard ISS and the scholarship, not only by voice, but also by unidirectional
video from the ISS to the ground within the ARISS program.

In addition to the existing VHF radio amateur station, ISS will host a S-Band
video transmitting station. This new equipment can broadcast images from the ISS
during the school contacts or other pre-recorded video images up to 24 hours a
day to allow ground stations tuning.


It is planned to transmit DVB-S signals on 2.4GHz at either 1.3Msps or 2.3Msps
with 10 watts of RF from the ISS Columbus module.

The IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination Panel have announced
frequencies of 2422.0 MHz and 2437.0 MHz.

HamVideo is the name of the onboard DATV S-band transmitter. HamTV is the name
of the complete system, comprising DATV downlink and VHF voice uplink. Kaiser
Italia SRL was the prime-contractor for the design and development of the flight
and ground segment http://www.kayser.it/index.php/exploration-2/ham-tv


Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano KF5KDP is planned to launch from Baikonur in
Kazhakstan to the ISS on May 28 (see High School Student’s RocketHub Project).
It is understood that the HamTV equipment will be carried to the ISS on the
Japanese HTV-4 spacecraft currently planned for a launch on August 4.

HamTV on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Hamtvproject

More information from AMSAT-Italia at
http://www.amsat.it/Amsat-Italia_HamTV_brochure.pdf

Link Budget http://www.amsat.it/Amsat-Italia_HamTV.pdf

ARISS Antennas Installed on Columbus http://www.ariss-eu.org/columbus.htm


[ANS thanks Mike, M5AKA, for the above information]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium News



The 2013 AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium will start late afternoon on Friday, July 19 and will run through until the afternoon on Sunday, July 21 at the Holiday Inn, Guildford, GU2 7XZ, UK.

It will be preceded by an exciting “Hands-on” CubeSat Workshop which will take
place at the nearby University of Surrey on the Friday and this will be
followed, at the hotel, by the usual Colloquium “Beginners Session” in the late
afternoon.

A number of keynote presentations have already been arranged for the Colloquium.
These include Alistair Scott, the President of the British Interplanetary
Society. The BIS has, over many decades, developed ideas and concepts about the
future of space travel and both Patrick Moore and Arthur C Clarke were members.
Alistair has had many years experience working in the space industry and will be
reviewing the future possibilities for ventures into space both small and large.
The BIS is presently developing one of the Sprites for the Kicksat mission and
Andrew Vaudin will be presenting a paper about this and also providing a
demonstration.


It is anticipated that both the FUNcube-1 and FUNcube-2 missions will be
launched later this year and the FUNcube team will be on hand to talk about the
missions and the planned educational outreach. A full demonstration of the
Engineering Model, which has been performing flawlessly for almost a year, will
also be provided.

On the Sunday, the General Manager of the RSGB, Graham Coomber, G0NBI will be
talking about the Society’s vision of the future of amateur radio and how
amateur satellites can play a major part in helping to secure that future.

There will also be updates on a number of the other current amateur satellite
projects including HAMtv from the ISS, spectrum matters, operating methods, new
products etc. Additionally there will be a satellite demonstration station
operating over the weekend and visits to the new technical facilities at the
University are planned.

There are still a few slots available for additional speakers, so if you would
like to make a presentation, please contact Dave Johnson G4DPZ e-mail: dave at
g4dpz dot me dot uk as soon as possible.

The AMSAT-UK organising committee looks forward to welcoming both regular
attendees and newcomers – you can be assured of a warm welcome and an exciting
weekend.

The event is open to all, full details of the accommodation, travel and booking
arrangements are at
http://amsat-uk.org/colloquium/colloquium-2013/

Details of the free “Hands On” CubeSat Workshop are at
http://amsat-uk.org/colloquium/cubesat-workshop-2013/


[ANS thanks AMSAT-UK for the above information ]



---------------------------------------------------------------------



Merritt Island High School StangSat Progress and Launch Date


Integrated testing  of the Merritt Island High School StangSat with CalPoly was
accomplished this past week. During the testing it was shown that StangSat can
receive the wake-up and sleep signal from CalPoly's satellite and go to the
respective states. StangSat's mission is to measure acceleration and other
factors involved in a launch.

NASA has announced that StangSat launch will be next Summer on a SpaceX mission
called CRS-5. CRS-5 is tentatively scheduled for August of 2014 and will serve
as a resupply mission the International Space Station.

Congratulations to the StangSat Team for being the first NASA sponsored High
School CubeSat to be selected for a flight!


[ANS thanks StangSat Team, for the above information]



/EX



In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership in the President's Club. Members of the President's Club, as sustaining donors to AMSAT Project Funds, will be eligible to receive addi- tional benefits. Application forms are available from the AMSAT Office.

Primary and secondary school students are eligible for membership
at one-half the standard yearly rate. Post-secondary school students
enrolled in at least half time status shall be eligible for the stu-
dent rate for a maximum of 6 post-secondary years in this status.
Contact Martha at the AMSAT Office for additional student membership
information.

73,
This week's ANS Editor,
Lee McLamb, KU4OS
ku4os at amsat dot org


_______________________________________________ Via the ANS mailing list courtesy of AMSAT-NA http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/ans