A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):

** After ISS departure, Cygnus resupply vehicle releases 14 CubeSats including several built by university groups:

• Cygnus departs space station, deploys CubeSats – Spaceflight Now
• Nanoracks Deploys 250th Satellite, Eighth Cygnus Mission – NanoRacks

The university satellites include:

• NanoRacks Cygnus deployer:
  • SwampSat II (University of Florida)  will deploy “a 172-square-foot (16-square meter) loop antenna after release from the NanoRacks deployer. The antenna will measure very low frequency wave propagation in the upper ionosphere.“
  • Orbital Factory-2 (University of Texas, El Paso) “will perform a technological demonstration of 3D printing of conductive material. The small satellite features a 3D printing 2-DOF gantry table mechanism that will deposit conductive ink and simulate repairing of a solar cell.“
  • HuskySat-1 (University of Washington) – “HuskySat-1’s goal is to test two experimental payloads, a Pulsed Plasma Thruster, and a high-frequency K-band communication system, as well as hosting an Amateur Radio Linear Transponder.”
    • HuskySat-1 with VHF/UHF Linear Transponder Set to Deploy Soon – ARRL
• SEOPS Slingshot deployer:
  • EdgeCube (Sonoma State University, Santa Clara University and Morehead State University) aims to monitor ecosystem change over time by observing variations “in leaf reflectance in the range 680 to 750 nm from changes in vegetation chlorophyll absorption and mesophyll scattering due to seasonal leaf phenology or stress“.
  • MakerSat 1 (Northwest Nazarene University in Idaho) “designed to be quickly snap-assembled by astronauts on the space station, then loaded into its deployment slot”.
    • Satellite designed by NNU Students Set to Depart from the ISS – NNU News
    • MakerSat: A CubeSatDesigned for In-Space Assembly, B. Grim et al, 30th SmallSat Conf., Utah State Univ., 2016 (pdf)

A demo of the MakerSat 1 quick assembly:

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-033 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

• HuskySat-1 Deployed, Telemetry Beacon Active
• Free Digital Copy of “Getting Started with Amateur Satellites” Now Available for New or Renewing Members
• Joe Spier, K6WAO, Resigns as AMSAT President
• Melissa Pore To Be Honored at Hamcation February 2020
• W1ANT Pro Satellite Tracker Announced
• AMSAT Argentina Drifting APRS Buoy on 145.825 MHz
• VUCC Awards-Endorsements for February 2020
• Upcoming Satellite Operations
• Upcoming AMSAT Events
• ARISS News
• Satellite Shorts from All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

• Resources:
  • Launch options:
    • The New Launch Industry: Smallsats driving the demand for dedicated launch services – SatMagazine
    • Rocket Launch Trends Roaring into the 2020s – Planet.com
    • Rocket Lab points out that not all rideshare rocket launches are created equal – TechCrunch
  • SteamJet Space Systems – Water fueled thruster for satellite orbit control
    • Water-based spacecraft propulsion system gets testing program | Aerospace Testing International
  • Smallsats by the Numbers – SatMagazine
  • Inspiration Fuels the National Space Club – Univ. Alabama at Huntsville – “Startup funds of $1,000 were provided to each Alabama CubeSat Initiative subsystem team when it started in the 2018-2019 school year, and faculty advisors integrated design efforts into university curricula as senior design projects.”
  • Twitter:
    • NANOSAT.ETH (@myfirstsatellit) / Twitter
    • Smallsats (@smallsats) / Twitter
•  Projects:
  • MiniCarb –
    • NASA Team Demonstrates Greenhouse Gas-Measuring Instrument | NASA
    • Space Program Innovation, One Small Satellite at a Time – LLNL
  • Celestial milestone for USI’s satellite project | Eyewitness News (WEHT/WTVW) – UNITE CubeSat at Univ. of Southern Indiana
  • Kinéis raises 100 million euros and finances its constellation of nanosatellites dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT) – Kineis
  • Kepler decides to build its 140-satellite cubesat constellation in-house – SpaceNews.com
  • OneWeb joins the satellite Internet gold rush this week | Ars Technica
  • Canadian Companies Will Likely Have Double Digit Satellites Launched This Year – The Start of a Trend – SpaceQ

** Judi Sandrock – Modular Smallsat Teaching Tools with Xinabox – Cold Star Project S02E17

Xinabox co-founder Judi Sandrock from South Africa is on the Cold Star Project with host Jason Kanigan, and we’re talking about their modular smallsat teaching tools.

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A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):

** A review of KRAKsat performance after its deployment from the ISS in June 2019. The satellite was developed by students at the AGH University of Science and Technology  and Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. It was “one of the first Cubesat type satellites in Poland but also the first satellite in the world which uses magnetic liquid, called ferrofluid, for orientation control”. KRAKsat was active in orbit for about two weeks before a cascade of problems led it into an unstoppable reboot cycle.

• Lessons Learned From A CubeSat Postmortem | Hackaday
• KRAKsat Satellite Mission – Lessons Learned – ResarchGate

This slow energy drain continued until the voltage dropped to the point that the power supply shut down, and that’s were things really started going south. Once the satellite shut down the batteries were able to start charging back up, which normally would have been a good thing. But unfortunately the KRAKsat had no mechanism to remain powered down once the voltage climbed back above the shutoff threshold. This caused the satellite to enter into and loop where it would reboot itself as many as 150 times per orbit (approximately 90 minutes).

The paper then goes into a laundry list of other problems that contributed to KRAKsat’s failure. For example, the satellite had redundant radios onboard, but the software on them wasn’t identical. When they needed to switch over to the secondary radio, they found that a glitch in its software meant it was unable to access some portions of the onboard flash storage. The team also identified the lack of a filesystem on the flash storage as another stumbling block; having to pull things out using a pointer and the specific memory address was a cumbersome and time consuming task made all the more difficult by the spacecraft’s deteriorating condition.

[ENG] KRAKsat & Światowid deployment seen from @Space_Station!

[PL] Deployment widziany z Międzynarodowej Stacji Kosmicznej – robi wrażenie! 🚀#kosmos #polskawkosmosie pic.twitter.com/jmE5pATBqC

— KRAKsat Space Systems (@kraksatpl) July 9, 2019

** Recognition for the CubeSat projects of the students at The Weiss School (preK-8) in Palm Beach Garderns, Florida:

• The Weiss School students recognized by U.S. Rep. Brian Mast – WPTV.com.
• Mast Introduces Resolution Recognizing Weiss School Accomplishments – Congressman Brian Mast
• Gardens middle school students building second satellite to launch into space -The Palm Beach Post – West Palm Beach, FL

More about the two Weiss School CubeSats

• WeissSat1 CubeSat
• WeissSat-1: A Student Developed Astrobiology Payload for Small Satellite Microgravity
  Research, R. Lyons et al., 32st Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, Aug. 2018 (pdf).
• CapSat 1 – Gunter’s Space Page
• CapSat-1 – Nanosats Database

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-026 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

• HuskySat-1 With AMSAT VHF/UHF Linear Transponder Planned for Deployment Soon
• Celebration of 50th Anniversary of Australis-OSCAR 5
• ARRL to Argue for Continued Access to 3-GHz Spectrum as FCC Sets Comment Deadlines
• FO-99 (NEXUS) 1st Anniversary Report
• Amateurs in the News: “96-year-old Amateur Radio operator at Ontario Science Centre speaks with astronaut”
• Upcoming ARISS Contacts
• Upcoming AMSAT Events
• Upcoming Satellite Operations
• Satellite Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

• Resources:
  • PolySat – “PolySat is a student run, multidisciplinary independent research lab. We are the CubeSat development team of Cal Poly, an originator and leader for launches in the CubeSat community.”
  • Pauline Faure – Inside the CubeSat Lab at Cal Poly – Cold Star Project

Dr. Pauline Faure, Assistant Professor at California Polytechnic State University’s Aerospace Engineering Department, is on the Cold Star Project with host Jason Kanigan. We’re talking about what it’s like to be a student in Cal Poly’s CubeSat Lab. Dr. Faure has international experience in Europe, Japan and the USA. The lab has completed eight missions in the past year including the bus for Lightsail 2. This is a great interview for space students.

•  Projects:
  • Building an Orbiting Internet Just for Satellites – IEEE Spectrum
  • Crew Works Human Research, CubeSats and Gears Up for Spaceship Departures – Space Station/NASA

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A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):

** ACRUX-1 CubeSat was launched by the Melbourne Space Program last summer on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket. The goal of the not-for-profit organization is “to launch the next generation of technology pioneers”. The CubeSat project was three years

… in the making. In June 2019, Melbourne-based volunteer students from various Australian universities across multi-disciplinaries designed, built from scratch and successfully launched a working CubeSat satellite called “ACRUX-1” into lower earth orbit on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket mission called Make It Rain. This was part of a ridesharing mission through Spaceflight, a launch service provider.

Here’s part of the integration process at @SpaceflightInc! They’re integrating #ACRUX1 in the CubeSat dispenser. It’s then closed & placed in the rocket. When the rocket reaches the right orbit, it’s deployed, the dispenser’s front door opens & the satellite pops out!#MakeItRAIN pic.twitter.com/2AAtU1LsKy

— Melbourne Space Program (@MelbSpace) June 14, 2019

The next project is ACRUX-2

ACRUX-2 is the MSP’s next exciting nano-satellite mission that will be focused on the concept of responsible use of space.

Given the success of ACRUX-1, the MSP team have been given permission to think big! The plan is to build and launch a 3U Cubesat. Currently, the project is in the mission planning stage and the finer details of the mission are still to be finalised – so stay tuned for more info!

Check out the MSP news page for info on the ACRUX-1 and updates on ACRUX-2:

• ​ACRUX-1: Mission success
• What makes ACRUX-1 one-of-a-kind? (Part 1: Education Innovation)
• What makes ACRUX-1 one-of-a-kind? (Part 2: Business Sustainability)
• ACRUX-1: You had questions, we’ve got answers

A video about the project: Insights into successfully designing, building and launching a CubeSat

Video of a live stream presentation by Hydrix electronics engineer, Blake Fuller, sharing his journey in helping to design and launch the ACRUX-1 CubeSat. The event was hosted by the Space Association of Australia

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-012 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

• Virgin Orbit Plans Flight Test of LauncherOne Rocket in February
• AMSAT Awards Update
• AMSAT at Cowtown Hamfest – Ft. Worth – January 17-18
• JARL Announces FO-29 Activation Schedule
• CAMSAT Says CAS-6 Activation for Amateur Use has been Delayed
• Telemetry Dashboard Available for SMOG-P and ATL PocketQubes
• MIT Radio Society W1MX January Lecture Series on “Everything Radio”
• AMSAT-DL Announces a New QO-100 DownConverter V3d
• AMSAT South Africa Space Symposium 2020 First Call for Papers
• Upcoming ARISS Contact Schedule
• Upcoming Satellite Operations
• Satellite Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

• Resources:
  • Suppliers — CubeSat.org
  • Miniature energetic electrostatic analyzer designed for CubeSat missions: Scilight: Vol 2020, No 2
  • AstroCast – Advanced and Sustainable Satellite IoT Communication Network
    • CubeSat finds its way in space with Galileo receiver – GPS World
•  Projects:
  • • Blue Canyon Technologies to build its largest satellite to date for MethaneSAT – SpaceNews.com
    • Cubesats gain broader acceptance for astrophysics missions – SpaceNews.com
    • Qarman (Qubesat for Aerothermodynamic Research and Measurements on AblatioN) – von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (VKI)
      • Belgium’s QARMAN CubeSat to deploy Jan 20 – Southgate Amateur Radio News

   

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A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):

** Guatemalan university student team’s Quetzal-1 CubeSat heading for the ISS for deployment from the Japanese Kibo module: Guatemalan first CubeSat delivered to JAXA : Experiment – International Space Station – JAXA

On December 3, 2019, the CubeSat “Quetzal-1” designed and built by students and researchers of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (University of the Valley of Guatemala) was delivered to the JAXA at Tsukuba Space Center by the satellite development team.

“Quetzal-1” is the Guatemalan first satellite, selected at the second round of the KiboCUBE Programme which has been jointly promoted by JAXA and United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). Since the first orbital deployment of CubeSats from Kibo in 2012, this is the 13th mission of CubeSat deployment using the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD). Quetzal-1 will be deployed from the ISS Kibo in the spring of 2020.

See also  An University Team from Guatemala Selected for Second Round of KiboCUBE- JAXA.

** The UC Irvine CubeSat  team gives an update on their project:

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-005 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

• AMSAT Member KC9ZJX Receives 2020 Martin Luther King Jr. Award
• Changes to AMSAT-NA TLE Distribution for January 2, 2020
• Space Fence nearing operational acceptance by U.S. Air Force
• VUCC Awards-Endorsements for January 2020
• Winter Field Day to Include Limited Satellite Operations
• Hamfests, Conventions, Maker Faires, and Other Events
• Upcoming Satellite Operations
• Satellite Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

• Resources:
  • CubeSat Simulation Library – MATLAB & Simulink

• • CubeSat Toolbox – Princeton Satellite Systems
  • Engineering Tools – NASA
•  Projects:
  • Tiny Satellite for Studying Distant Planets Goes Quiet – NASA JPL
  • Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell of the Chandra X-ray Center at Harvard talk about Cubesat applications for astronomy:

• • How Tiny Satellites Can Help Us Weather Through Hurricanes | Dr. Kerri Cahoy | TEDxBocaRaton:

Kerri Cahoy is an Associate Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kerri leads the Space Telecommunications, Astronomy, and Radiation (STAR) Laboratory, and design, builds, launches, and operates shoebox-sized satellites called CubeSats. Kerri works with CubeSats to improve hurricane tracking using an instrument called a microwave radiometer. Her team flies miniature microwave radiometers on CubeSats and has shown that they work as well as larger and more expensive satellites with the Microsized Microwave Atmospheric Satellite (MicroMAS-2A). The next step is to go from only having one CubeSat in orbit to several, so that they can fly over the same location more often, like every fifteen minutes instead of only two or three times a day. Kerri has a Ph.D. and master’s in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

• • Global ADS B and Aviation Weather from Spire Global:

Join Spire Aviation from Freightwaves for an introduction to impactful uses of our global ADS-B data to illuminate trends in aircraft operation. In addition, we will also demonstrate our Aviation Weather Product.

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A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):

** “Kesari” CubeSat built by Indian students in six months. After launch to orbit on an Indian rocket, the team at the NRI Institute of Technology (NRIIT) at Agiripalli in Krishna district will upload their country’s national anthem to the demonstration spacecraft: Satellite built by students to beam anthem from space – The Hindu

“The satellite will start functioning once put in orbit. Antennas fixed to ‘Kesari’ will beam the anthem in Morse code as high-frequency radio waves. The anthem can be heard by ham radio operators and on walkie talkies across the world,” Mr. Salvendar told The Hindu on Friday.

Mr. Manoj Kumar said that ‘Kesari’ will have a lifespan of more than six months if equipped with solar panels. He thanked faculty Sk. Abdul Rehaman and the institute management for encouraging them in designing the mini satellite.

NRIIT Placement Cell director N.V. Surendra Babu said that Mr. Salvendar and his team designed the 450-gram satellite in just 45 days. The students said they drew inspiration from Sputnik-1 designed by Russian scientists.

** PocketQubes will enable satellite projects for educational and non-profit organizations at even lower costs than CubeSats.

FOSSASAT-1, for example, is a PocketQube demo mission recently launched for Fossa Systems on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket.

FossaSat is a pocketqube satellite which is being developed using free and open source ethics, more detailed information about the hardware and software involved in this project can be found here.

It will create the world’s first free and open source IoT network. The satellite will test the new LoRa spread spectrum modulation, allowing unprecedented link budgets with <5$ receivers, democratizing telecommunications to millions of students and individuals worldwide.

Based on the 5x5x5cm PocketQube standard, it will truly reduce the barrier to entry for launching a satellite with launch and development costs under 30000 EUR.

Initial results are generally positive:

Although not a full mission success due to our deployable antennas not deploying and our link budget aprox. 25db inferior to planned. We have learnt invaluable data in this first mission for our upcoming missions (report coming). OBC & EPS working nominally for nearly 1 month! pic.twitter.com/IxfB7dUosD

— Fossa Systems (@FossaSys) December 30, 2019

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-363 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

• First Element of ARISS Next Generation Radio System Readied for Launch on SpaceX CRS-20
• ARISS SSTV Event Planned for December 28 – January 1
• Reminder: AMSAT CW Day on January 1
• Changes to AMSAT TLE Distribution for December 26
• Upcoming Satellite Operations
• Satellite Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

• Resources:
  • CubeSatShop.com – One-stop webshop for CubeSats & Nanosats
  • Citadel Space Systems – “Designing Cubesats for Science and Interplanetary Exploration”
•  Projects:
  • Understanding Distant Dust In Other Solar Systems Is Key To Imaging Exo-Earths, Says NASA – Forbes
  • NASA Satellite May Be Able to See Rainbows in Clouds – IGN

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