Category Archives: Amateur/Student Satellite

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Radio, Space Systems

Audio: The evolution of the SmallSat industry

October 11, 2018 TopSpacer

Small satellites, which typically refers to spacecraft in the kilogram to a few hundred kilograms range, have become in the past few years a large and growing part of what is happening in space. Smallsats have actually been around since the start of the Space Age. Just a few years after Sputnik reached orbit, the first amateur satellite reached orbit as well. (See A Brief History of AMSAT.) Note that “amateur” here refers primarily to the involvement of the amateur radio community and the use of amateur radio bands for communications with the satellites.

For decades, smallsats remained a niche activity carried out mostly by AMSAT and university student teams. Now companies like Planet and Spire operate hundreds of satellites in orbit for commercial purposes and constellations with thousands of satellites are set to be deployed during the coming years.

The Small Satellite Conference has been held annually in Logan, Utah since 1987 and it’s growth from a gathering of less than a hundred people to a jamboree with a few thousand people has mirrored the growth in the smallsat sector. In this interview, Dr. Pat Patterson, Director of Advanced Concepts at Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory and Chairman of the SmallSat Conference, talks about the Constellations, a New Space and Satellite Innovation Podcast: Sputnik, Constellations and the Evolution of the Small Sat Industry

After referring to the 84 kg Sputnik, launched in 1957 as a “small satellite,” Dr. Patterson discusses the three keys to the growth of the small sat industry: affordability, responsiveness and shorter development cycles. And because the barrier to entry is so much lower for small satellites, more and more small companies begin to come online bringing a lot more competition, which brings a lot more good ideas to the table.

====

Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes

Amateur/Student Satellite, Space Models

Build a LEGO version of the Planet Labs Dove satellite

August 23, 2018 TopSpacer

These days even elementary student groups and small organizations are building CubeSats and seeing them go into orbit. If you are not up to building and launching a working spacecraft yourself, here are the directions for assembling a LEGO model of the Dove earth imaging CubeSat developed by the company Planet of Silicon Valley: Planet Labs Dove – Instructions, Parts List, Options

*Custom built LEGO model of the Planet Dove 3U CubeSat*

The history of the project can be found in the blog posts by Scott Moore, Jr. at LEGO Designs.

====

<br />

Activism, Amateur/Student Satellite, SpaceCasts

Video: TMRO Space – “The big deal about SmallSats”

August 19, 2018 TopSpacer

The lates episode of the TMRO Space program is now available: The big deal about SmallSats – TMRO

Emory Stagmer (@VAXHeadroom) and Craig Elder join us in studio to talk about the recent SmallSat conference and what the big deal about small satellites actually is.

Video: Cosmonauts throw student CubeSats into orbit during ISS spacewalk

August 16, 2018 TopSpacer

On Wednesday, Russian flight engineers Oleg Artemyev and Sergey Prokopyev made a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. Their initial tasks included hurling four student-built smallsats into orbit: Spacewalkers toss nanosatellites into orbit, hook up bird migration monitor – Spaceflight Now

The spacewalkers’ first task was the deployment — by hand — of four CubeSats built by Russian students.

The cosmonauts carried with them two Tanyusha satellites, each about the size of a small toaster oven, built by students at Southwestern State University with demo payloads to study spacecraft autonomy technology and to measure the vacuum of space. Another pair of SiriusSat CubeSats, assembled by Russian schoolchildren and equipped with particle detectors, was also with the cosmonauts.

Prokopyev tossed the four nanosatellites into space by hand just outside the Pirs airlock, using a manual release method used on previous Russian spacewalks.

Here is a video of the hand-tossed orbital deployments plus views of the tiny satellites drifting away from the station:

Most of the rest of the nearly 8 hour long EVA involved installation of an antenna and related equipment for a German project to track animals wearing GPS transmitters:

Then the duo turned their attention to the installation of antennas and cables for a German-developed instrument package to track global animal movements. The equipment was placed outside the station’s Zvezda service module in a multi-step procedure that took a couple of hours longer than originally planned.

Called Icarus, the project aims to reveal changes in migratory routes, animal connections and other animal behavior. The antenna for Icarus was carried aloft in February, and a computer launched on a Russian Progress mission last year to help process the signals coming from tracking units tagged to animals on Earth.

“Icarus is a global collaboration of research scientists that are interested in life on the globe, and once we put together all the information on mobile animals, then we have a different and new understanding of life on Earth,” said Martin Wikelski, lead scientist on the Icarus project, director of the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology, and professor the University of Konstanz in Germany.

The Icarus project will start by tracking small animals, such as birds, bats and flying foxes, according to DLR, the German Aerospace Center. Tags fixed to the animals will transmit information on their migratory behavior — such as their GPS coordinates, acceleration and environmental data — up to a receiver on the space station.

Video: Japan’s BIRDS project deploys satellites from ISS for countries new to space

August 15, 2018 TopSpacer

The Japan space agency’s BIRDS project has launched university student-built CubeSats from the Kibo module on the International Space Station for several countries that have never before put spacecraft into orbit. The project is managed by the Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) and is known officially as the Joint Global Multi-Nation Birds Satellite project.

*A view of the BIRDS-2 deployment as seen by German astronaut Alexander Gerst.*

Birds-1 deployed scientific and technology demonstration CubeSats from Ghana, Mongolia, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Japan while BIRDS-2 deployed CubeSats for Bhutan, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

This video, narrated mostly in Japanese but with English subtitles, describes the Birds project and shows the two deployment events. An animation between 11:10 – 14:30 gives a clear depiction of how the ISS satellite deployment system works.