[jamsat-news:2116] ANS-303 AMSAT Weekly Bulletins

AMSAT NEWS SERVICE
ANS-303

ANS is a free, weekly, news and information service of AMSAT North
America, The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation. ANS 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.

Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to:

ans-editor@amsat.org

In this edition:
* SSETI Express Launched 30 September 2005
* Urgent Reguest for UWE-1 Data
* New Eagle Project Information
* OSCAR 11 Report - 25 October 2005
* AMSAT Awards
* ARISS Status - 24 October 2005


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-303.01
SSETI Express Launched 30 September 2005

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 303.01
 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
October 30, 2005
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-303.01

The SSETI Express satellite launched at 06:52 UTC on Thursday, 27
October 2005 on board a Kosmos 3M launcher.  One hundred and three
minutes later, exactly on schedule, the first signals were heard form
the groundstation in Aalborg, and two-way communication was established.
In addition to several successful communication sessions with SSETI
Express, two of the Cubesat passengers, UWE-1 and Xi-V, have been heard
by their groundstations.  

An official release from ESA stated, "22:20 CEST SSETI Express went into
a safe mode due to an undervoltage caused by battery charging problems.
The operations team is working actively to resume nominal operations of
the satellite and is receiving tremendous help in the process from the
amateur radio community. At the time of the anomaly many mission
milestones had already successfully
been met."

Graham, UA/G3VZV reports, "that it seems that no reliable reports of any
signals have been received and the teams are reviewing all the telemetry
already received to fully understand what is happening on board.Initial
review suggests that there is a significant chance that the power supply
problem may correct itself."  Graham also advises that the command
station in Aalborg is planning to try to try a blind command of the
satellite into S band on mode - maybe on a Sunday am pass at 10:30 UTC.

As the statement above makes clear, ESA and the SSETI Association
greatly value the input that amateur operators are providing and would
ask amateurs around the world to continue to check for signals on
437.250MHz at the appropriate pass times. These signals may be short
bursts of 9k6 data every 18 secs or bursts of pulse telemetry every 30
secs. Please understand that the pulse beacon  decoder can produce
spurious results on plain noise if over driven!

Anyone hearing anything that matches the above detail is requested to
please email details to missioncontrol@sseti.org

The type of the first transmissions will depend on the state of the
battery.

In Nominal mode - a sub 1 second burst of AX25 9k6 FSK telemetry every
18 seconds on the downlink frequency of 437.250 MHz.

In Recovery or Safe mode - simple on/off telemetry comprising 16 x 100
msec carrier pulses. This telemetry is repeated every 30 seconds in Safe
Mode and every 2 minutes when in Recovery Mode.

The satellite will transmit at a power of 3 watts.

A daily report of the launch campaign is being maintained at
http://sseti.gte.tuwien.ac.at/express/mop/index.php?uri=news.html This
mission operations site is completely up-to-date regarding Kepler TLEs
and other LEOP "Launch and Early Operations Phase" details.

The SERACC software, needed to decode and submit the received data to
the SSETI database, together with some audio files containing recorded
9k6 signals to experiment with is also now available 

The ESA website about SSETI Express is at:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/sseti_express/SEMARJ7X9DE_0.html

The latest version of the SSETI Express handbook can be downloaded free
of charge from the AMSAT-UK website at:
http://www.uk.amsat.org/

[ANS thanks Graham, UA/G3VZV and Trevor, M5AKA for the above
information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-303.02
Urgent Reguest for UWE-1 Data

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 303.02
 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
October 30, 2005
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-303.02

Radu, with the UWE-1 Team in Wuerzburg, Germany reports that they have a
very serious situation and need immeadiate assistance copying UWE-1
telemetry data.  Due to the extremely unfavorable weather conditions in
Wuerzburg (heavy clouds and very thick fog, with visibility sometimes
less than 10 m), we were not able to decode much of the sensor data from
UWE-1 during the last two passes over our ground station. We have
already prepared a list with new equipment we need for the GS, but it
might take a while to get it, as 0 1 November 2005 is a national bank
holiday in Germany.

The command station is able to send commands to the satellite and can
receive the answers, but the signals received were S2-S3 level on the
S-meter. The last reliable data is already 30 hours old. They urgently
need some beacon data in order to characterize the status of the
subsystems and decide how to continue the mission.

UWE-1 is sending one beacon every 60[sec] on 437.505+- MHz, 1200baud
AFSK. One beacon is 33 bytes long. The UWE-1 team would be very happy to
receive also raw (.hex) data, we can decode them here. Please send the
data to: cubesat@informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de. Thank you very much!

Please forward this email to everyone able to help us with some new
data. 

Thank you very much for your support!

[ANS thanks Radu for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-303.03
New Eagle Project Information

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 303.03
 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
October 30, 2005
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-303.03

New and updated information about the Eagle HEO satellite project is now
available at
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/eagle/

The new information is about the IHU-3 (Internal Housekeeping Unit -
Version 3) which is the brains behind Eagle and is an open source, open
design component. The IHU-3 link contains the source code archives and
documentation for projects and developers incorporating the IHU-3 into
their system designs.

There is also a link to the Can-Do website operated by Steve Moraco,
KC0FTQ which contains reference documents, firmware updates, programming
libraries, schedules and milestones for all aspects of the Can-Do bus,
modules, widgets and other components. The Can-Do is the interconnection
bus that connects all Eagle modeules to the IHU. 

[ANS thanks Lee KU4OS for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-303.04
OSCAR 11 Report - 25 October 2005

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 303.04
 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
October 30, 2005
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-303.04

During the period 24 September to 25 October 2005 the VHF beacon on
145.826MHz resumed transmissions, as expected, on 30 September, sometime
between 06:05 and 06:42 UTC passes. Reasonable signals were also
captured on the 17:44 pass, later that day.  However by the 16:49 UTC
pass on 02 October, the beacon had switched OFF. Transmissions resumed
on 21 October, and should continue until around 31 October.

The on-board clock continues to show a very large error. Currently it is
19.2394 days slow, having lost six hours while the beacon was last OFF,
ie. between 02 October and 21 October.  When the beacon is ON, the clock
is stable to within a few seconds.

All the analogue telemetry channels, 0 to 59 are zero, ie they have
failed.  The status channels 60 to 67 are still working.

The eclipses have now ended, and the satellite should be in continuous
sunlight for the remainder of this year, and well into next year.  This
should help the satellite to continue transmitting, although continuous
sunlight can cause problems due to excessive temperatures.

The watchdog timer appears to be operating on the 20 day cycle, ie.
approximately ten days ON followed by 10 days OFF. It appears to be
uneffected by problems of the on-board clock. However, poor solar
attitude, and battery problems, may be combining to produce a low line
voltage. This causes the beacon to switch OFF premeaturely, and resets
the watchdog timer cycle.

The Beacon frequencies are -
VHF 145.826 MHz.  AFSK FM  ASCII Telemetry
UHF 435.025 MHz.  OFF
S-band 2401.5 MHz. OFF

Listeners to OSCAR-11 may be interested in visiting my website which
contains an archive of news & telemetry data. It also contains details
about using a soundcard or hardware demodulators for data capture.
There is software for capturing data, and decoding ASCII telemetry.  The
URL is
www.users.zetnet.co.uk/clivew/

If you place this bulletin on a terrestrial packet network, please use
the bulletin identifier $BID:U2RPT114.CWV, to prevent duplication.

[ANS thanks Clive G3CWV  for the above information]

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-303.05
AMSAT Awards

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 303.05
 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
October 30, 2005
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-303.05

This week, congratulations go out to all of the following.

Allen Kenny, KK4EMK, Satellite Communicators Club
Robert Tucker, WA6MBL, Satellite Communicators Club

Allen Kenny, KK4EMK, Satellite Communication Achievement Award #423
Marc Sanchez, KD5MSS, Satellite Communication Achievement Award #424

Allen Kenny, KK4EMK, 51 on 51 Award #38

Marc Sanchez, KD5MSS,  South Africa Communication Achievement Award 

To see all the awards visit http://www.amsat.org or
http://www.amsatnet.com

[ANS thanks Bruce KK5DO, for the above information]      

/EX


SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-303.06
ARISS Status - 24 October 2005

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 303.06
 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
October 30, 2005
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-303.06

1. Upcoming School Contacts

Kawachi Citizen's Committee for Youth in Miyoshi, Hiroshima, Japan has
been approved for a contact on Thursday, 03 November 2005 at 0744 UTC.


2. ARRL Article on JOTA 2005

Over the weekend of 15-16 October, astronaut Bill McArthur, KC5ACR,
participated in the 2005 Jamboree on the Air (JOTA). Since then, Bill
has been active on voice, and has continued to thrill hams worldwide.
ARRL covered the JOTA event in a web story entitled, "ISS Astronaut Gets
in the JOTA Spirit."  See:
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/10/21/4/?nc=1


3. Astronaut Training

Astronauts Nicole Stott and Garrett Reisman attended their first amateur
radio license training session on 18 October.  They were scheduled for
their second session on Wednesday,  26 October 26. On 17 October 17, Bob
Behnken took and passed his amateur radio exam.  He received his
callsign, KE5GGX, and is currently in the selection pool for future ISS
expedition crews. Congratulations Bob!


4.Expedition 11 Crew Debrief

The U.S. debrief session with Expedition 11 crew member John Phillips,
KE5DRY, is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, 08 November at 2100 UTC.


5. WebTech.com Article on ARISS

ARISS delegate Rosalie White sat for an interview with Web-Tech.com to
discuss the ARISS program. The online story is available on their
website. See:
http://www.personaltechpipeline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=171204199 


6. School Selection Committee Meeting Held

Rosalie White held a School Selection Committee teleconference on 13
October 2005. Discussions included the NEEIS database, which will reopen
in mid-October for teachers to finish entering their evaluations, and
the possibility of Bill McArthur participating in two ARISS contacts per
week, which could reduce the backlog of U.S. schools waiting for a
contact.  Meeting minutes will be posted on the ARISS website in the
near future. The next committee meeting is scheduled for 08 December
2005.


7. Space.com Article on Olsen

Space.com wrote an article covering Greg Olsen's flight to the ISS. The
story mentions his ARISS contacts with school children and the
importance of sharing his flight with others to excite their
imaginations. See:
http://space.com/missionlaunches/051017_olsen_us.html


8. ARISS - Eindhoven Contact

Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers, PI9ISS, flew to the ISS with Expedition 9
crew members in conjunction with the Dutch Expedition for Life science,
Technology and Atmospheric research (DELTA) Mission. On April 25, 2004,
Kuipers participated in an ARISS contact with students from three
schools: Saltoschool Hanevoet (primary school), Sint Joriscollege
(secondary school) and Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (university).
The students who were selected for the contact gathered in the radio
room of the Amateur Radio Club of the Technical University of Eindhoven
(PI4TUE), the Netherlands.  The contact was a success. A short article
on the contact has recently been made available to the ARISS team,
complete with photos and links to audio and video. See:
http://home.vianetworks.nl/users/hamoen/pa3guo/ariss_contact.html

[ANS thanks Carol, KB3LKI 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 additional benefits.
Application forms are available from the AMSAT Office.

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