Category Archives: Amateur/Student Satellite

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – March.3.2019

March 3, 2019 TopSpacer

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

** The Virginia CubeSat Constellation involves students at four Virginia universities and is supported by the Virginia Space Grant Consortium. They have developed three CubeSats that will be launched to the ISS on a Cygnus cargo craft and then sent into orbit by a NanoRacks deployment system: Three Virginia University Satellites Get Closer to Launch – Virginia Space Grant Consortium (pdf)

A giant leap towards space for Virginia university students took place on February 26 when students from three Virginia universities delivered their small satellites to NanoRacks in Houston to be integrated into the Company’s commercially developed CubeSat deployer (NRCSD) and then launched on Northrop Grumman’s Antares to the International Space Station.

The satellites are part of the Virginia CubeSat Constellation mission, a collaborative project of the Virginia Space Grant Consortium and four of its member universities: Old Dominion University (ODU), Virginia Tech (VT), University of Virginia (UVA), and Hampton University (HU). Three nano-satellites, each about 4 inches cubed and weighing approximately 3 pounds, have been developed and instrumented (one each at ODU, VT and UVA) to obtain measurements of the properties of the Earth’s atmosphere. As the orbits of the satellites decay due to atmospheric drag, satellite instruments will quantify atmospheric density.

The three CubeSats will be deployed via the NRCSD by astronauts aboard the International Space Station into orbit near-simultaneously so they can orbit together and function as a constellation. The ODU satellite, which has a drag brake to intentionally cause orbital decay, is expected to remain in orbit for up to four months. The other two satellites should orbit for up to two years at an altitude of 250 miles before burning up when they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. 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.

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – Feb.25.2019

February 25, 2019 TopSpacer

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

** LunaH-Map Spacecraft – A CubeSat project at Arizona State University:

The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) is a 6U CubeSat mission recently selected by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to fly as a secondary payload on first Exploration Mission (EM-1) of the Space Launch System (SLS), scheduled to launch in July 2018. LunaH-Map is led by a small team of researchers and students at Arizona State University, in collaboration with NASA centers, JPL, universities, and commercial space businesses. The LunaH-Map mission will reveal hydrogen abundances at spatial scales below 10 km in order to understand the relationship between hydrogen and permanently shadowed regions, particularly craters, at the Moon’s South Pole.

** KickSat-2 Update – Latest on the recently deployed CubeSat KickSat-2, which started as a Cornell student project funded with a Kickstarter, that release over a hundred “ChipSats” when it reaches a very low earth orbit (assuming it gets permission from the FCC to do so): KickSat-2 is Alive and Being Tracked – ARRL.org

KickSat-2 is scheduled to deploy up to 104 tiny Sprite satellites into low Earth orbit. The Sprites then would transmit on 437.240 MHz at 10 mW, communicating with each other via a mesh network and with command stations on Earth. The Sprites, which are less than 2 square inches, are expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere within weeks. Manchester did not indicate if attempts would be made to deploy the Sprites.

NASA calls KickSat-2 a technology demonstration mission that’s designed to demonstrate the deployment and operation of prototype Sprite “ChipSats,” also known as “femtosatellites.”

The FCC recently imposed a $900,000 penalty on a commercial concern, Swarm Technologies, for launching similar tiny satellites after the FCC had denied permission.

“These spacecraft are therefore below the size threshold at which detection by the Space Surveillance Network can be considered routine,” the FCC told Swarm Technologies.

Manchester had been trying without success to convince the FCC to allow him to deploy the Sprites from KickSat-2, but, apparently gun shy after the Swarm action, the agency denied permission at the last moment.

Once NASA adopted KickSat-2 as its own mission, however, the regulatory body shifted to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and the launch went forward.

Zachary Manchester, who started the project while a post-doc at Cornell, is now an assistant professor at the Stanford School of Engineering. Here is the REx Lab: KickSat Project page at Stanford.

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-055 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

50th Anniversary AMSAT OSCAR Satellite Communications Achievement Award (Limited Edition) Starts March 3rd
FalconSAT-3 Digipeater Waiting for Your APRS Packets
Qatar OSCAR-100 Web Receiver Now Live
AMSAT Journal January/February 2019 Is on Its Way
KickSat-2 is Alive and Being Tracked (Updated 2/19/2019)
Ladybird Guide to Spacecraft Communications Training Course
IARU Region 1 Youngsters on the Air (YOTA) Announced
This Month in AMSAT History
AMSAT-SA Space Symposium March 16, 2019
HamSCI Workshop Receives National Science Foundation Grant
Upcoming Satellite Operations
ARISS News
Satellite Shorts from All Over

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

CubeSat Projects
Space radio:
- Receiving Es’Hail-2 GeoSat – George Smart – M1GEO
- New enhancements to low-cost GOES weather satellite station for amateurs – Space-for-All/HobbySpace.com
Launching CubeSats:
- Start-up to Launch CubeSats from Hot Air Balloons – MachineDesign.com – “Leo Aerospace Inc., a start-up company that came out of Purdue University with plans to use high-altitude balloons to launch rockets into space, has successfully fired a test rocket. This moves the company closer to its goal of ending the backlog of microsatellites waiting months or longer to “hitch” a ride on larger rockets.”
Misc:

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Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Radio

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – Feb.18.2019

February 18, 2019 TopSpacer

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

** Surrey Space Center at the University of Surrey in the UK is the leader of the consortium that built the RemoveDEBRIS spacecraft, a 100 kg microsat deployed into orbit from the ISS last June with the help of NanoRacks. The goal of RemoveDEBRIS is to test several technologies for removing debris and derelict spacecraft from low earth orbit. (Stellenbosch University (South Africa) is another college member of the consortium.)

One of these technologies is a harpoon system that was tested successfully on Feb.8th: RemoveDEBRIS: success for harpoon experiment – SSTL

Another technology for decreasing space junk involves deployment of a “sail”, i.e. a lightweight sheet, that increases the drag of the spacecraft as it flies through the extremely wispy remnants of the atmosphere in low earth orbit (LEO) and thus greatly decreases the time it takes to fall out of orbit.

Two drag sail demos involving Surrey are part of the SSO-A mission launched by SpaceX last December, which deployed of over 60 smallsats into LEO. Two so-called “Free Flyer” structures that deployed groups of the smallsats have themselves deployed sails. The two Free Flyers do not have any communications systems and so the team needs the help of skywatchers to track them: SSO-A Solar Sails deployed – may be visible to naked eye | Southgate Amateur Radio News –

The free flyers separated from the launch vehicle and in turn deployed multiple satellites each including Microsats and CubeSats over the course of several hours. The Upper Free Flyer (NORAD ID: 43763) is a large structure at approximately 1,000kg and the Lower Free Flyer is approximately 260kg (NORAD ID: 43760). Each Free Flyer hosts one of our 16m2 aluminised kapton sail which was set to deploy 24 hours after launch.

The systems were standalone isolated systems with no communications so we don’t have any telemetry confirmation. Drag parameters from the TLEs are indicative of a successful deployment, but far from definitive. We’re therefore waiting for them to become optically visible in northern latitudes in the next couple of weeks. Based on the experience with our InflateSail mission, we’d expect these objects to be quite bright to the naked eye if the sails have deployed successfully. InflateSail was 10m2 and (initially) transparent with a +4.2 mag, whereas these sails are 16m2 and metalised so could well flare brightly.

Any observations that could be made by the community of either of these objects would be greatly appreciated and they should make for interesting targets.

** MeznSat – UAE University Students Focus On Greenhouse Gases With New Satellite Project – SpaceWatch.Global

A nanosatellite named MeznSat is being manufactured by a group of university students in the UAE, the Khaleej Times has reported. The aim of the satellite is to pinpoint the cause of greenhouse gases. Once the data from the satellite is shared with students, analysts and researchers, it is hoped that they can work to mitigate the production of the gases. The students, from the American University of Ras Al Khaimah (AURAK) and the Khalifa University, aim to launch the satellite later this year.

** NepaliSat-1 is a joint project of Japan’s Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) and the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology and is funded by the government of Nepal. It is Nepal’s first satellite. The cubesat will be transported to the ISS on a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo mission scheduled for April and later deployed into orbit from the station.

The BIRDS 3 Project at Kyutech also includes smallsats for Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka and Bhutan.

** A Brown University study of Canadian lakes relies on daily imagery available via Planet‘s constellation of around 150 CubeSats – Tiny satellites reveal water dynamics in thousands of northern lakes – Tech Explorist

In a finding that has implications for how scientists calculate natural greenhouse gas emissions, a new study finds that water levels in small lakes across northern Canada and Alaska vary during the summer much more than was assumed.

…

In all, the study explored four sub-areas of the North American Arctic and sub-Arctic and found the little-studied Canadian Shield to be most dynamic of all, with about 1.4 percent of its landscape seasonally inundated by small fluctuations in lake levels.

Cooley said, “What I’m most excited about from a science perspective is the ability to make use of this new CubeSat imagery,” Cooley said. “We couldn’t have made these observations without the CubeSats, and here we show that it’s possible to extract valuable scientific information from those images.”

Large space organization satellites trimmed with touchy logical instruments can assemble a wide range of data, however, basically, don’t make enough overhead [passes] to get changes that happen over brief timeframes. Furthermore, the satellites that do ignore once a day come up short on the camera goals to mention fine-scale objective facts of the lake region.

The CubeSats, as of late propelled by an organization called Planet, offered a potential solution. The organization works in excess of 150 satellites, which circle the Earth in a course of action that empowers them to picture Earth’s whole landmass every day as the planet pivots underneath them. And keeping in mind that the small satellites need modern logical hardware, they do have powerful cameras fit for catching pictures with 3-meter resolution.

** Exolaunch of Germany has arranged for over 60 smallsats, including many university CubeSats, to go to orbit this year: Exolaunch Plans Ambitious Launch Campaign | Space.com

Exolaunch, the German launch services provider formerly called ECM-Space, is preparing its most complex small satellite cluster to date.

This spring or summer, Exolaunch plans to send 40 small satellites, including a 16-unit cubesat for in-space transportation startup Momentus, into orbit on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

…

Since its first launch in 2013, Exolaunch, a spinoff of the Technical University of Berlin, has helped send 54 satellites into orbit, ranging in size from one-quarter of a single cubesat to a 110-kilogram small satellite. Many of those were German spacecraft funded by the German space agency DLR, including the 20-kilogram TechnoSat and four eight-kilogram S-NET communications satellites from the Technical University of Berlin, the University of Stuttgart Institute of Space Systems’ 110-kilogram Flying Laptop and Wuerzburg University’s one-kilogram UWE-4 cubesat.

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-048 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

QO-100 released by QARS
ARRL Adds JO-97, FO-99, QO-100 to LoTW Configuration File
New Distance Record on AO-91
Call for Papers – Digital Communications Conference
KickSat 2 Is Alive And Kicking
Upcoming Satellite Operations
ARISS News
Shorts From All Over

More CubeSat/SmallSat info:

- First ham radio geostationary satellite transponder active | Southgate Amateur Radio News
- AMSAT / ARISS Fundraising Campaign | Southgate Amateur Radio News
- NanoRacks Completes Sixth CubeSat Deployment from Cygnus Spacecraft, Continues Historic Program | NanoRacks
- Nanosatellite to serve the Internet of Things tested for space – ESA
- Arianespace to launch satellite deployment solution from Open Cosmos – Arianespace – “Arianespace and Open Cosmos, a company providing turnkey space missions, announced today that they have signed a contract for the launch of an innovative CubeSat deployment solution.”
- LeoStella Inaugurates State-of-the-Art Smallsat Production Facility – LeoStella/Business Wire
- CubeSat deployed from space station to test sample return technology – Spaceflight Now

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Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past

Amateur/Student Satellite, Education, Space Systems

Cygnus cargo ship deploys CubeSats for NanoRacks

February 14, 2019 TopSpacer

Following its departure from the ISS last week, a Northrop-Grumman Cygnus cargo vessel has deployed three CubeSats, including MySat-1, which was built by students in the UAE, and KickSat-2, which originated with a Cornell university program led by Zac Manchester and involved a Kickstarter campaign with contributors assigned to one of hundred tiny “Sprite” chipsats to be released from the “mothership”.

NanoRacks arranged for the deployments and has posted the following release about the program:

NanoRacks Completes Sixth CubeSat Deployment
from Cygnus Spacecraft, Continues Historic Program

February 14, 2019 – Dulles, Virginia – Last night, NanoRacks successfully completed the Company’s sixth CubeSat deployment mission from Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft. Cygnus (S.S. John Young) departed the International Space Station on February 8th, 2019 and performed a number of on-orbit activities, including yet another historic NanoRacks deployment.

Cygnus maneuvered to a higher-than-Space Station altitude (445 kilometers) where the NanoRacks External Cygnus Deployment mission released two of the three CubeSats on board into orbit, MySat-1 and the second CHEFSat satellite. The spacecraft then lowered to an altitude of 300 kilometers to deploy KickSat-2.

The deployment of MySat-1 marks an additional historic moment for NanoRacks, being the first payload that NanoRacks has launched and deployed from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). MySat-1 is a joint program from Yahsat, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, and Northrop Grumman, and is the first satellite built at the Yahsat Space Lab in Masdar City, and among the first to be developed by local students.

“We could not be more excited about all of the activity happening in the space industry in the UAE,” says NanoRacks Vice President of Business Development and Strategy, Allen Herbert. “We have a number of groundbreaking programs in the works, and the MySat-1 deployment is the perfect way to kick start NanoRacks activities in the region.”

KickSat-2 was selected for flight by NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) and was launched as the sole CubeSat in the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites-16 (ELaNa-16) mission complement, sponsored by the NASA Launch Services Program (LSP).

KickSat-2 was deployed well below the International Space Station altitude due to the satellite sub-deploying smaller “ChipSats,” a prototype representing a disruptive new space technology. These ChipSats, also known as “Sprites,” are tiny spacecraft that include power, sensors, and communication systems on a printed circuit board measuring 3.5 by 3.5 centimeters, with a thickness of just a few millimeters and a mass of just a few grams. The ChipSats are expected to be in orbit for merely a few days before burning up.

“This entire mission is a testament to the flight safety teams in-house at NanoRacks and at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and the flight operations team at Northrop Grumman,” says NanoRacks External Payloads Manager, Henry Martin. “We were able to shepherd some extremely challenging payloads through the NASA system on a timeline that met the needs of our customers. This required a lot of teams working very closely together, and we’re proud to have yet another successful mission that demonstrates the extended use of cargo vehicles.”

The NanoRacks External Cygnus Program is the first program to have leveraged a commercial resupply vehicle for use beyond the primary cargo delivery to Space Station, demonstrating the future possibilities for using cargo vehicles for the NanoRacks Space Outpost Program and other commercial space station activities. With successful completion of this mission, NanoRacks has deployed 35 satellites from the Cygnus into multiple orbits.

“Thank you again to the teams at NASA and Northrop Grumman for allowing our creativity in orbit to grow with our customers’ dreams,” continues Martin.

To date, NanoRacks has deployed 231 satellites into low-Earth orbit.

For additional updates, follow @NanoRacks on Twitter.

For NanoRacks media inquiries, please email Abby Dickes, adickes@nanoracks.com.

About NanoRacks: NanoRacks LLC, an XO Markets company, is the world’s leading commercial space station company. NanoRacks believes commercial space utilization will enable innovation through in-space manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, fiber optics – and more, allow for transformational Earth observation, and make space a key player in finding the solution to Earth’s problems.

Today, the company offers low-cost, high-quality solutions to the most pressing needs for satellite deployment, basic and educational research, and more –in over 30 nations worldwide. Since 2009, Texas-based NanoRacks has truly created new markets and ushered in a new era of in-space-services, dedicated to making space just another place to do business.

In 2017, the Company announced their long-term plans via the NanoRacks Space Outpost Program. This program is dedicated to the repurposing of the upper stages of launch vehicles in-space and converting these structures into commercial habitats, both humanly and robotically tended, throughout the solar system.

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Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Radio

Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – Feb.10.2019

February 10, 2019 TopSpacer

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

** Images of earth from lunar orbit are being captured via amateur radio transmissions from a transceiver placed on a Chinese satellite by a group at the Harbin Institute of Technology: Far side of the Moon photographed by amateurs – Dwingeloo Radio Telescope/CAMRAS

This image shows the far side of the Moon, as well as our own planet Earth. It was taken with a camera linked to an amateur radio transceiver on board the Chinese DSLWP-B / Longjiang-2 satellite (call sign BJ1SN), currently in orbit around the Moon, and transmitted back to Earth where it was received with the Dwingeloo Telescope.

*Earth as seen from lunar orbit via a camera on the Chinese DSLWP-B / Longjiang-2 satellite and a transceiver built by a team at Harbin Institute of Technology. Credits Dwingeloo Radio Telescope.*

This image represents the culmination of several observing sessions spread over the past few months where we used the Dwingeloo telescope in collaboration with the Chinese team from Harbin University of Technology, who build the radio transceiver on board Longjiang-2, and radio amateurs spread across the globe.
…
The transceiver on board Longjiang-2 was designed to allow radio amateurs to downlink telemetry and relay messages through a satellite in lunar orbit, as well as command it to take and downlink images. In that it has succeeded, as many radio amateurs have received telemetry and image data. Being able to use the Dwingeloo telescope to help with this has been a lot of fun.

Note that the Dwingeloo Radio Telescope in the Netherlands is the “largest radio telescope in the world for amateurs”.

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