Category Archives: Amateur/Student Satellite

AMSAT, Student Sat & ISS amateur radio news

Go to AMSAT News for the latest headlines about developments in amateur and student satellites and for updates about amateur radio on the ISS.

ANS 040 Weekly AMSAT Bulletin – February 8, 2014:
* Ham radio CubeSat deployment postponed
* Ham TV Commissioning Postponed until March 8
* Satellites News from the Magazines
* Can Radio Hams receive NASA’s ISSE-3/ICE ?
* Send Your Name to the Asteroid Bennu!
* Outernet – Shortwave radio from space
* FCC Seeks Comments on WR-2015 Draft Rcommendations
* ARISS News
* Satellite Shorts From All Over

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Here is an update on the cubesats brought to the ISS by NanoRacks for deployment from the Japanese module : ISS CubeSat Deployment, “Ham Video” Commissioning Postponed – ARRL

Two Amateur Radio-related activities aboard the International Space Station have been postponed. The deployment of Amateur Radio CubeSats planned for February 6 has been put off, and a new date has not yet been announced. NASA reported that astronaut Koichi Wakata, KC5ZTA, this week installed a deployer mechanism that will be used in concert with the Kibo robotic arm to release the first set of CubeSats. He ran into difficulty last week installing some related electronics, delaying the CubeSat deployments. NASA now wants to make sure the CubeSats do not fall into the intended orbit of the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite, which goes into space later this month.

AMSAT & ISS amateur radio news

Go to AMSAT News for the latest headlines about developments in amateur and student satellites and for updates about amateur radio on the ISS.

ANS 033 Weekly AMSAT Bulletin – February 1, 2014:
* January/February 2014 AMSAT Journal is Ready
* AMSAT-NA at Orlando HamCation 2014 Next Weekend!
* AMSAT SKN Best Fist Winners
* Von Karman Institute QB50 Precursor Flights to Carry Ham Transponders
* HamTV Article Available From AMSAT Journal Sample Downloads Page

AMSAT & ISS amateur radio news

Go to AMSAT News for the latest headlines about developments in amateur and student satellites and for updates about amateur radio on the ISS.

ANS 026 Weekly AMSAT Bulletin – January 25, 2014:
* AMSAT-NA will be at HamCation 2014!
* AMSAT-NA Updating Their List of Current AMSAT-Related Nets
* FUNcube at National Student Space Conference
* Radio amateurs receive Rosetta signals
* Northern Virginia-Maryland-Washington, DC AMSAT Events
* $50SAT PocketQube two months after launch
* Upcoming AMSAT Events
* ARISS News
* Satellite Shorts from All Over

AMSAT & ISS amateur radio news

Go to AMSAT News for the latest headlines about developments in amateur and student satellites and for updates about amateur radio on the ISS.

ANS 019 Weekly AMSAT Bulletin – January 18, 2014:
* ARRL Features Bringing Space into the Classroom
* The Pragmatic Guide for Using the FUNCube Materials Science Experiment in the Classroom
* SA AMSAT Invites Educational Payload Proposals
* PhoneSat 2.4 Ham Radio CubeSat
* UK CubeSat programme in New Electronics
* Peter Portanova W2JV To be Active on Satellites as W1AW/2
* Deorbitsail CubeSat
* 2014 Eastern VHF-UHF-Microwave Conference — April 11-13
* FUNcube-1 in Practical Wireless Magazine
* ARISS News
* Satellite Shorts From All Over

Here is the video discussed in the “Bringing Space into the Classroom” item above. From the caption:

AMSAT Forum at the 2013 Dayton Hamvention and the presentations on education wrapped up with a talk by Mark Spencer, ARRL Education & Technology Program Director. “Spence”, WA8SME, briefly described his classroom experiments for measuring the “wobble” of the Fox satellite, demonstrating a Maximum Power Point Tracker (MPPT) for a solar array, and a lower cost azimuth-elevation rotor system for lightweight satellite antennas

FUNcube – an educational satellite for home and school

The FUNcube nanosat (now officially designated AO-73) reached orbit last November via a Russian Dnepr rocket. The FUNcube project is led by AMSAT-UK and is intended as

 a complete educational single CubeSat project with the goal of enthusing and educating young people about radio, space, physics and electronics.

The project encompasses the FUNcube Dongle, which is a low cost device that plugs into a USB port and turns your computer into

 the “ground segment”, or a radio receiver designed to allow anyone to try their hand at reception of satellites like FUNcube anywhere on Earth as part of a global educational collaboration project collecting information from space.

(The Dongle also needs to connect to a simple antenna.)

FUNcubeDongle1

The satellite has materials on the external surface of the satellite configured with temperature sensors to provide an experiment to study heat radiation and to demonstrate telemetry collection and space research methods. There is now a teachers guide available on how to combine this on-board experiment data with the ground station:

As shown in the above diagram, the telemetry data obtain can be shared at the FUNcube Real Time Data on line warehouse.

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Find more about FUNcube and other space radio projects in the HobbySpace Radio section.