Category Archives: Amateur/Student Satellite

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space Systems

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – April.14.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

** More on the Virginia university student CubeSat program mentioned in previous roundups here:

In a giant leap for Virginia Tech, the first satellite built by undergraduate students is scheduled to be launched into space on April 17, 2019.

One small step closer to reaching space, a group of Virginia Tech undergraduate students recently delivered their small satellite to Houston to be incorporated into NanoRacks’ commercially developed CubeSat deployer. Virginia Tech’s satellite, along with two satellites from other Virginia universities, is scheduled to launch on the payload section of Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket and then will be headed to the International Space Station.

If the weather is clear, the Antares launch will visible over a large East Coast area: Rocket launch from Wallops Flight Facility to be visible from Hampton Roads, NE North Carolina | WTKR.com.

** An all girls team in Kyrgyzstan is building a smallsat:

Back in January we started crowdfunding on the Patreon platform and by the end of November the amount of donations has reached more than $1,100 per month. This amount has increased particularly after the aforementioned article in Quartz magazine.

Moreover, since November we have a donor-organization in the Kyrgyz space program — the Internews organization will donate sufficient amount of money that will cover expenses on building, testing and launching two (!) nanosatellites.

This does not mean that we no longer need patrons — there are quite a few unforeseen crazy ideas (for example, to test a prototype of the satellite in the mountains of the Issyk-Kul region), the costs of which are not included in the Internews grant, but are necessary to make the satellite launch happen.

** Canada’s Western University and Nunavut Arctic College will build a CubeSat to test

a novel imaging system for the engineering technology demonstration with the potential to provide virtual reality-ready images. This imagin system has future applications in the Earth observation and space exploration.

More at:

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-104 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • TAPR/AMSAT Banquet Speaker Announced
  • Seats Still Available for AMSAT Academy
  • AMSAT Activities at Hamvention 2019
  • N8HM to Appear on Ham Talk Live April 18th
  • Last Chance to Bid in ARISS Auction
  • ARISS SSTV Event Continues Through 18:00 UTC April 14th
  • Diwata-2 Designated Philippines-OSCAR 101 (PO-101)
  • March/April 2019 Edition of Apogee View Posted
  • How to Support AMSAT
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • Satellite Shorts from All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

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Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA, and International Partners are Creating a New Space Age

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space Systems

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – April.7.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

** The SPACE HUAC project at Univ. of Massachusetts at Lowell involves undergraduates in the building a NASA sponsored CubeSat

The projects aims to

demonstrate the practicality of high data rate communications on a 3U CubeSat. A phased array of X-band patch antennas will allow for rapid beam steering.

** USC engineering students building CubeSat as a demo for Vector Launch‘s first rocket flight: Viterbi students build, deliver satellite to start-up | Daily Trojan

A team of students in the Viterbi School of Engineering have taken one small step toward space and made one big leap for their careers.

Early in March, these students finished building and delivered USC’s third CubeSat satellite, which is about the size of a breadbox. David Barnhart, a research professor in the astronautics department, led the students selected from the Space Engineering Research Center through the year-long building process of the satellite.

The team has successfully delivered the satellite to its customer, Vector Space Systems, a start-up developing satellites and launch vehicles. Vector will use this newly built satellite to test its technology in space and ensure it works before selling it to customers.

** Spudnik-1 project at University of Prince Edward Island in Toronto involves undergraduates and graduate students in the building and launching of a CubeSat for remote sensing applications: UPEI students continue work on small satellite | CBC News

Grant McSorley, project manager of the CubeSat project at UPEI, said the group of over 20 undergraduate and graduate students have been designing the satellite since September, and now, they’re putting the final touches on their first set of prototypes.

UPEI’s satellite, called SpudNik-1, will be used for what McSorley calls “precision agriculture” that will capture photos and monitor the state of farm fields across P.E.I.

“The idea is to take photos from space that researchers and farmers can use in order to decide where to apply fertilizer, where to apply water in a more efficient way than they’re doing right now,” McSorley said.

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-096 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • AMSAT India AISAT APRS Payload Operational on 145.825 MHz
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • UT1FG/MM QSL Procedure Announced
  • Hamvention Booth Announcement
  • AMSAT Activities at Hamvention 2019
  • The Case of the Unknown Satellites
  • Upcoming ARISS Contacts
  • International Space Station Astronauts are Calling CQ Students
  • VUCC Awards-Endorsements for March 2019
  • Raspberry Pi magazine MagPi Features Ham Radio
  • Satellite Shorts From All Over

See also ANS-095 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin – AMSAT Files Comments in FCC Orbital Debris Mitigation Proceeding

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

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Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Radio, Space Systems

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – April.1.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

** Yale student team to build BLAST CubeSat with cosmic ray detector. The NASA sponsored spacecraft will launch in 2020: Student-built satellite to launch into space – Yale Daily News

On March 14, a group of Yale students learned some stellar news — NASA selected their satellite to be launched into space. The announcement marks the first time a Yale undergraduate group will launch a spacecraft.

The team — which consists of members of the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association — received the launch grant through NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative competition. Over the course of four years, students designed a satellite called BLAST, which stands for Bouchet Low-Earth Alpha/Beta Space Telescope.

See also:

** CubeSat SeaHawk-1 with an ocean color instrument was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in December. The SeaHawk team has released the first images from the spacecraft: SeaHawk-1 CubeSat Captures First Ocean Color Image – UNCW.edu.

This first SeaHawk-1 engineering test image (pictured above) was captured by the HawkEye instrument on March 21st, 2019 at 18:47 UT from an altitude of 588 km and superimposed on Google Map data © 2019 Google, INEGI. At the current altitude that SeaHawk is flying, the pixel resolution of the HawkEye instrument is approximately 130 meters (425 feet) giving us an image size of approximately 6000 lines along track (780 km or 485 mi) x 1800 pixels across track (234 km or 145 mi). The true color full resolution closeup of the region from south of Monterey Bay to north of San Francisco (presented below) was produced by combining three of the Hawkeye bands (red band-6 (670nm), green band-5 (555nm) and blue band-2 (443nm).

The project is led by the SOCON (Sustained Ocean Color Observations using Nanosatellites) team at Univ. of North Carolina at Wilmington and also includes NASA, AAC Clyde Space, and Cloudland Instruments. The project was funded with grants from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

SeaHawk-1 is a 3U CubeSat (size 30x10x10cm and weight 5kg) designed and built by AAC Clyde Space and launched in December 2018 aboard SpaceX Falcon 9. SeaHawk-1 CubeSat was one of the 64 satellites included in the Spaceflight SSO-A Small Sat Express: their first dedicated ride-share mission for small satellites.

SeaHawk-1 is also the first 3U CubeSat specifically designed to carry an ocean color instrument payload (HawkEye). The goal of this proof-of-concept mission is to provide free high-spatial resolution images of Earth’s coastal regions. HawkEye, designed by Cloudland Instruments, is an 8-band multispectral instrument similar to SeaWiFS (one of the most successful ocean color missions to date).

It differs in that: it was miniaturized (10x10x10cm) to fit inside the CubeSat, band 7 was modified to improve atmospheric correction, all bands were designed not to saturate over land, and the entire sensor was built with low-cost, off-the-shelf materials.

** University of Toronto students fund and build CubeSat for space biology experiment: Lofty goals: UTAT gears up for milestone competitions – U of T Engineering News

The Space Systems Division is preparing to launch the first fully student-funded Canadian satellite into orbit. The small satellite, or cubesat — about the size of a loaf of bread — will carry a biological payload and will analyze the behavior of bacteria in space with the aim of assessing the risk of infections during a long-term space mission.

The team has a busy summer ahead: they’ll be testing the accuracy of the sensors on the cubesat, running hundreds of hours of electronics tests and conducting thermal tests to ensure their satellite’s components can withstand the extreme temperatures it will experience in orbit, between -40 and 80 degrees C.

The cubesat is scheduled to launch on the Indian Space Research Organization’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in January 2020.

“Cassandra Chanen (Year 2 EngSci) shows off the Heron MK II, a cubesat that will take a microbiology payload to space. (Credit: Erica Rae Chong)”

** More about the Hampton University students developing CubeSat software in a project sponsored by the Virginia Space Grant Consortium:

Hampton University is part of a collaborative project of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium where students from three Virginia universities delivered small satellites to NanoRacks in Houston, to be integrated into a CubeSat deployer (NRCSD), which will be launched into space on April 17, 2019. Four undergraduate Hampton University students worked on the project by developing software to perform analysis on the data that will be received from the satellites.

“Hampton University has always been on the forefront of innovation. The work our students are doing is being recognized and utilized by industry leaders, and we are excited to be part of this collaboration,” said Hampton University President, Dr. William R. Harvey.

The satellites will communicate data to ground stations at Virginia Tech, University of Virginia and Old Dominion University for subsequent analysis using an analytical tool being developed by Hampton University students from the Atmospheric and Planetary Science Department.

More than 140 undergraduate students have been hard at work on the mission since June 2016 as a cross-institutional team. Undergraduate student leaders and team members from physics, electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering and computer science disciplines have worked together to make the mission a reality. The students have been coached by faculty advisors and have benefitted greatly from advice from NASA, industry and academic advisors, and NanoRacks, the world’s leading commercial space station company.

“Asanji Chofor at the CubeSat build AGILE workshop.”

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-090 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • SSTV Transmissions from ISS Set for April 1-2, 2019
  • AO73/FUNcube-1 Mode Changes
  • AMSAT Academy to be Held Prior to Hamvention Thursday, May 16, 2019
  • ARISS Out-of-this-Word Auction Starts April 8, 2018
  • International Space Station Astronauts are Calling CQ Students
  • India Space Research Organization to Launch EMISAT With 28 Satellites on April 1, 2019
  • AMSAT India Requests APRS Reports
  • GRCon19 to be Held September 16-20, 2019
  • This Month in AMSAT History
  • AmazonSmile for AMSAT!
  • Microwave Update Conference October 3-5, 2019 in Lewisville, TX
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • ARISS News
  • Satellite Shorts from All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

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Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space Radio

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – Mar.25.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

** Arizona student team to build CubeSat with inflatable antenna for NASA program:  UA Student-led CatSat Mission Selected by NASA | UANews

An inflatable space antenna designed by University of Arizona students is one of 16 small research satellites from 10 states NASA has selected to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard space missions planned to launch in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

The selections are part of the 10th round of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.

…

CatSat is a 6U CubeSat led by UA students from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and various departments including aerospace and mechanical engineering, astronomy, computer science, and systems and industrial engineering.

…

CatSat is the size of a large cereal box. When fully deployed, the inflatable expands in a bubble gum fashion, forming a sphere three feet across that sticks out from one side of the box. An aluminized spot inside the inflated sphere is used as the communication antenna to beam data back to the Earth. Since Catsat will be in low Earth orbit, the data can be downloaded using a ground station located at the UA.

CatSat is mainly a technology demonstration mission to mature this inflatable concept in Earth orbit. The ultimate goal is to fly such an antenna on an interplanetary mission that Reddy wants to lead to explore small bodies in the solar system.

** Hampton Univ. student team developing improve software for Cubesats: Hampton University students developing analysis software for satellites | 13newsnow.com

College students from all around Virginia, including in Hampton, are working on a major project that will analyze data of tiny satellites sent into space.

Four undergrad students from Hampton University are working with students from three other state universities to deliver small satellites to NanoRacks in Houston, Texas to be integrated into a CubeSat deployer (NRCSD).

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-083 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • AMSAT Activities at Hamvention 2019
  • NASA on the Air
  • Satellite Operating Demonstrations Planned for Tucson Hamfest
  • Three more 50th Anniversary Certificates Earned
  • “Getting Started” Guide CLoseout
  • Canadian Artist To Use HAARP To Transmit SSTV
  • ESEO Satellite Commissioning Starts
  • FoxTelem Version 1.07 Released
  • Sally Ride EarthKAM @ Space Camp’s 66th Mission Is Open For Registration
  • K6FW Gets 488 Grids
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • ARISS News
  • Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

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Amateur/Student Satellite

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – Mar.17.2019

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs:

** SpudNik-1 student CubeSat project at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a satellite built by UPEI engineering students – The Cadre/UPEI

CubeSat is a three-year project in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency in which multiple student teams work together to design, build and launch a miniature satellite. UPEI was one of 15 schools chosen for the project and started building the satellite in September.

The project at UPEI is a little different than others. The satellite is being worked on primarily by undergraduate students, said dean of engineering, Nicholas Krouglicof.

“We are doing it primarily with the undergraduate students through our design clinic program.”

…

The satellite being built by UPEI engineering students called SpudNik-1 will be used for precision agriculture on the Island. It will be able to detect a small area to distribute pesticides, instead of just spraying a large area. It will be able to determine if crops need more water and detect changes in overall landscape.

** Designing smallSats for animal tracking in NASA sponsored contest – Problem Solvers Win NASA Tournament Lab Challenge | NASA

Implemented by HeroX, the challenge sought ideas and concepts that incorporate small satellite technology along with other space, stratosphere, land and water surface systems to improve upon the current system of data reception for tracking animal position and path movement. A panel made up of NASA, BOEM and external experts evaluated submissions and recommended two winners. HeroX awarded each winning team $15,000.

  • Gaia: The Future of Satellite Animal Tracking, London
    Gaia proposed a constellation of 42 CubeSats orbiting 400 miles above Earth, each with a unique deployable antenna to enable reliable communication with 401 MHz animal tags. The design could enhance bandwidth, coverage and geolocation accuracy.
  • NEMO: The Near Earth Marine Observer, Stanford University in California
    This team of five graduate students proposed a constellation of 10 polar orbiting CubeSats and implements an open tag tracking standard via Doppler-shift location mapping. Using low-cost commercial-off-the-shelf hardware and open-source software protocols, the solution could provide fast, low-cost and easy access to tag data.

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-076 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • AMSAT at the Dayton Hamvention — Call for volunteers
  • Out of This World Auction Sponsored by ARISS
  • 50th Anniversary AMSAT OSCAR Satellite Communications Achievement Award
  • Lilacsat-1 LO-90 Re-entry Commemorative Competition
  • ARRL TI-2 Teachers Institute Includes Amateur Satellite Telemetry
  • ARRL Supports No Change to Table of Allocations for 45.5 – 47 and 47 – 47.2 GHz Bands
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • AMSAT-DL QO-100 Up- and Downconverter Kit Modifications Announcement
  • Changes to the AMSAT-NA TLE Distribution This Week
  • Satellite/AMSAT Presentation at Phoenix AZ – March 21, 2019
  • VUCC Awards-Endorsements for February 2019
  • GPS Network May Experience Errors in “Week Number” Rollover
  • Satellite Shorts From All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info: