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

** Arizona State Univ. Phoenix CubeSat set to deploy from ISS on Feb.12th. The first ASU undergraduate student built satellite, Phoenix will study Urban Heat Islands with observations of the earth using an infrared camera. The team welcomes help in visual tracking and amateur radio contacts.

After deployment, it will take some trial and error before we are able to confirm our spacecraft’s TLEs before we can comfortably predict its orbit. The more people who can help us spot our spacecraft, the sooner our operations phase can officially begin! If you would like to help listen for Phoenix, you can do so with the information below. 

If you think you’ve heard from Phoenix and you are a member of the SatNOGS network, please publish your observation on the Libre Space community page, and tag @sarah_srogers in the post.

See also Phoenix CubeSat upcoming deployment – Southgate Amateur Radio News

** Orbital Factory-2 communicates with the Univ. Texas at El Paso team that built the CubeSat in collaboration with Lockheed-Martin. The spacecraft was released into orbit via a Nanoracks deployment system on February 3rd  from the Northrop-Grumman Cygnus cargo vehicle after it departed from the ISS. UTEP Successfully Communicates With Satellite to Cap Monumental Project – Univ. Texas at El Paso

Joel Quintana, Ph.D., research assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a UTEP alumnus, said 25 students from various engineering disciplines worked on the OF-2 project throughout the course of two years. He was with a group of those students at a cSETR research space provided by the City of El Paso near the UTEP campus as they waited on notification from OF-2.

“Seeing their excitement when the first ping came in when they were able to communicate with the satellite as it orbited over El Paso was priceless,” Quintana said. “They leave this program knowing how to design, build and test spacecraft, making them really high in demand and industry experts.”

With this milestone reached, cSETR will now set off on a set of new initiatives including the development of spacecraft capabilities for on-orbit manufacturing, and planetary and lunar exploration. The center will conduct this work concurrently with its primary mission of training El Paso talent and cultivating a space technology workforce.

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-040 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

• Clayton Coleman, W5PFG, Elected AMSAT President
• Phoenix CubeSat Upcoming Deployment
• New ISS Tour Video Goes Inside Cygnus NG-12
• Changes to AMSAT-NA TLE Distribution
• HuskySat-1 Gains Enthusiastic Following
• Robert Bankston, KE4AL, Proposes amsatLink Project
• 10 US Schools Moved Forward in ARISS Selection Process
• AMSAT at Yuma (Arizona) Hamfest, 14-15 February 2020
• Hamfests, Conventions, Maker Faires, and Other Events
• Upcoming Satellite Operations
• Satellite Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

•  Projects:
  • Sunstorm ready for sunlight – ESA
  • Qarman CubeSat: falling into a fireball – ESA
  • Singapore startups’ NuX-1 cubesat to be orbited via Momentus, SpaceX | SpaceTech Asia
  • Aurora to test deorbit tether on Momentus mission – SpaceNews.com
  • SMC, Mission Partners Successfully Deploy Aerospace Rogue CubeSats from ISS – Los Angeles Air Force Base
  • Swarm Satellites installs ground station in Antarctica — Quartz
•  Resources:
  • Nanoracks Is Offering Unbeatable Rideshare Pricing & Services – Nanoracks
  • Exolaunch arranges rides for Spire cubesats on Indian rocket – SpaceNews.com
  • GomSpace Leads Development of a Teaming Agreement to Demonstrate Game-changing Communications Technology in Space With the University of Arizona, and American FreeFall Aerospace and Rincon Research

** Jeff Dillon – Cubesat to Mars – 22nd Annual International Mars Society Convention [October 17-20, 2019]

** NASA’s Cube Quest Challenge Crowdsources Ideas for Deep Space CubeSats

Pushing the boundaries of space technology, NASA’s first in-space competition invites the public to design, build and launch small satellites capable of advanced operations near and beyond the Moon. Three winners from the ground competition, completed in 2017, are readying their CubeSats for launch on Artemis I, the first uncrewed flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. Want to get in on the action? Additional teams can compete in the Deep Space Derby and Lunar Derby by securing their own launch opportunity. Explore more about NASA’s Cube Quest Centennial Challenge: http://www.nasa.gov/cubequest

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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):

** 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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