[amsat-bb] Re: old satellites / Moon

[MM]

It is possible to piggyback on a commercial satellite.
The Russians did it with several successful RS amateur radio satellites.

The Amateur radio satellite community should try to focus more in Piggyback satellite rides for our future satellites. We should avoid the stuff we that we do not know how to build such as rocket motors and stability systems. And focus on what we do best and that is build “Simple / KISS” transponders.

If there is a well-funded university out here interested in going to the Moon, we can piggyback an amateur radio project on one of the new Moon landers that NASA is planing on flying.  Let NASA do the hard stuff and we should focus on a simple mode b/j transponders.

Who wants to go to the Moon?


Miles WF1F  Marexmg.org



--- On Tue, 3/17/09, David - KG4ZLB <kg4zlb at googlemail.com> wrote:

> From: David - KG4ZLB <kg4zlb at googlemail.com>
> Subject: [amsat-bb] Re: old satellites
> To: "Hans Johnson" <hans.johnson at gmail.com>
> Cc: amsat-bb at amsat.org
> Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 1:28 PM
> I was reading about the newly launched GOCE satellite and
> the fact that 
> its mission will end when its 40kg tank empties - that of
> course may be 
> a long time coming but as it has an S band transmitter,
> could this not 
> be tweaked for us once the mission is complete?
> 
> And thinking further, for these satellites could amateur
> radio gear be 
> carried so that it could be activated once the main mission
> is complete? 
> Doing this over a number of years would provide a ready
> made supply of 
> new birds over a period of time.
> 
> I suppose logistics and cost will be the factor but its an
> idea and 
> would give us at least something!
> 
> -- 
> David
> KG4ZLB
> www.kg4zlb.com
> 
> 
> 
> Hans Johnson wrote:
> > Furthermore, from what I understand, international
> agreements (or at least
> > implicit agreements) now require the operators to vent
> any remaining fuel.
> > This is to prevent the satellite from exploding at
> some point in the future
> > due to either the (rather caustic) fuel corroding
> through the fuel tank, or
> > a debris/micrometeorite hit.
> >
> > Once this is complete, the operators will then
> permanently shut down the
> > satellite so that there is no chance of it interfering
> with the operational
> > fleet.  The last thing they want is a semi-active
> satellite drifting past an
> > operational satellite (at least from the POV of the
> earth station) and
> > potentially confusing tracking antennas, or otherwise
> interfering with
> > revenue traffic.
> >
> > As far as shifting them to amateur frequencies, I
> doubt it's physically
> > possible.  In order to get the Tx/Rx isolation they
> need, the satellites
> > will be using cavity filters, so unless you're
> very close to their passband,
> > there's no hope.  Heck, in my day job, we have to
> use different filters if
> > we want to operate in extended ku-band filters.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Hans Johnson
> > VA7HAS
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 3:52 PM, Wayne Estes
> <w9ae at charter.net> wrote:
> >
> >   
> >
> >
> >
> >   
> 
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