[amsat-bb] ANS-089

Sat Mar 29 16:49:27 PDT 2014

AMSAT NEWS SERVICE
ANS-089

The AMSAT News Service bulletins are a free, weekly news and infor-
mation service of AMSAT North America, The Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation. ANS publishes news related to Amateur Radio in Space
including reports on the activities of a worldwide group of Amateur
Radio operators who share an active interest in designing, building,
launching and communicating through analog and digital Amateur Radio
satellites.

The news feed on http://www.amsat.org publishes news of Amateur
Radio in Space as soon as our volunteers can post it.

Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to:
ans-editor at amsat.org.

In this edition:

* FUNcube-1 / AO-73 Transponder Test – March 29
* Eighth Annual AMSAT/TAPR Banquet Speaker Announced
* AMSAT Awards Announced
* Radar outage prompts delay of Falcon 9 launch
* Lithuanian President’s greetings message sent from space
* PRN codes for KickSat Sprites released
* New frequency for Ukrainian PolyITAN-1 CubeSat
* Upcoming AMSAT Events
* ARISS News
* Satellite Shorts from All Over

SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-089.01
ANS-089 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins

AMSAT News Service Bulletin 089.01
   From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
March 30, 2014
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-089.01

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FUNcube-1 / AO-73 Transponder Test – March 29

Results of last weekend’s tests: the transponder was maintained ON
for two orbits, and we did not see any noticeable fall in battery
temperature.

We are therefore proposing to repeat the test on Saturday, March 29,
but leave the transponder on for a longer period. We will switch it
on during the first pass over the UK (approx 10:30 UT) and switch it
off during one of the evening passes over UK, the first of which is
at approx 20:00 UT.

We are particularly interested to receive TLM when the satellite is
coming out of eclipse (i.e. when it should be at its coldest
temperature). So reception from suitably located stations would be
very welcome.

FUNcube website
http://www.funcube.org.uk/

FUNcube Yahoo Group
http://amsat-uk.org/funcube/yahoo-group/

FUNcube Forum
http://forum.funcube.org.uk/

[ANS thanks AMSAT-UK for the above announcement]

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Eighth Annual AMSAT/TAPR Banquet Speaker Announced

The eighth annual AMSAT/TAPR Banquet will be held on Friday night,
May 16.  This dinner is always a highlight of the AMSAT (Radio
Amateur Satellite Corp.) and TAPR (Tucson Amateur Packet Radio)
activities during the Dayton Hamvention.

This year's speaker will be Dr. Tom Clark, K3IO, 'Sixty Years a
Slave (to Amateur Radio)'.

Tom received his Ph.D. in Astro-Geophysics from the University of
Colorado, served as Chief of the Astronomy Branch at NASA Marshall
Space Flight Center, was a Senior Scientist at NASA Goddard Space
Flight Center, has been active in both AMSAT and TAPR, and holds an
Extra Class license.  Along with Bob McGwier, N4HY he developed the
first amateur DSP hardware, including a number of modems.  He
developed the uplink receivers and the spacecraft LAN architecture
used on all the Microsats (Oscars 16, 17, 18, 19, 26, 27 and 31).
Tom was inducted into the initial class of CQ Magazine's Amateur
Radio Hall of Fame in 2001.  Professionally, he is a Fellow of the
American Geophysical Society and the International Association of
Geodesy. In 2005 he was the first non-Russian to be awarded the
Special Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences for his
contributions to the international Very Long Baseline Interferometry
network.

Tickets ($30 each) must be purchased online by May 13th on the AMSAT
website at www.amsat.org through the AMSAT Store tab.
Tickets will not be sold at the Hamvention or at the door.
Tickets purchased online may be collected at the AMSAT booth
(433-435, 444-446).
The Banquet will take place at the Kohler Presidential Banquet
Center, 4572 Presidential Way, Kettering, OH  45429 (just south of
Dayton).  The cash bar will open at 1830 EDT, with the dinner
commencing around 1900 EDT.

[ANS thanks Steve Belter, N9IP for the above announcement]

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AMSAT Awards Announced

Here is our latest induction into some of the AMSAT awards community.

The following have entered into the Satellite Communicators Club for 
making their first satellite QSO.
Alan Ehrenberg, N9EDV
Benjamin Gaston, KV4RH
Scott Medbury, KD5FBA
Doug Birky, KB8M
Richard Manderski, W2SKI
Eric Stapleton, VA7TU

The following have earned the AMSAT Communications Achievement Award.
Richard Manderski, W2SKI, #562

The following have earned the South Africa Satellite Communications 
Achievement Award.
Richard Manderski, W2SKI, #US190

To see all the awards visit http://www.amsat.org or
http://www.amsatnet.com/awards.html

[ANS thanks Bruce Paige, KK5DO for the above announcement]

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Radar outage prompts delay of Falcon 9 launch

SpaceX's launch of a cargo resupply mission to the International
Space Station has been delayed from Sunday after a critical U.S. Air
Force rocket tracking radar was knocked offline, officials said late
Wednesday.

The radar is part of the Air Force-run Eastern Range, a network of
tracking, communications and safety assets stretching from Florida
into the Atlantic Ocean.

Sources said Air Force officials are trying to repair the radar
after a fire damaged it. The radar is located near Cape Canaveral,
but an Air Force spokesperson did not respond to multiple inquiries
on the nature of the problem and how long it would take to fix.

The radar outage already forced United Launch Alliance to delay the
launch of an Atlas 5 rocket with a classified National Reconnaissance
Office payload to no earlier than April 10. Liftoff of the Atlas 5,
which was already rolled out to the launch pad, was scheduled for
Tuesday.

Engineers will return the Atlas 5 rocket to its nearby integration
building Thursday to wait for another launch attempt.

A new target launch date for SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket was not
available late Wednesday, but a company spokesperson confirmed the
Air Force would be unable to support a launch attempt Sunday night.

Engineers had analyzed differences between the Atlas 5 and Falcon 9
rocket, including the configurations of the launch pads and the speed
at which the launchers take off, to see if the boosters could fly
without the damaged radar, a source said.

The SpaceX cargo resupply flight to the space station must be
scheduled around other visiting vehicles. A Russian Progress cargo
spacecraft is set to launch and dock to the space station April 9, so
any delay of more than a few days will likely cause the SpaceX launch
to slip to mid-April, at the earliest.

The Falcon 9 launch was previously delayed from March 16 to review
contamination on thermal blankets inside the Dragon spacecraft's
unpressurized cargo bay. SpaceX says the review showed the blankets
were acceptable to fly without changes.

The Dragon spacecraft will deliver 2.4 tons of equipment to the
space station.

Most of the payloads are packed inside the Dragon's pressurized
cabin, including 1,576 pounds of science and research equipment,
1,049 pounds of crew supplies, 449 pounds of vehicle hardware, and
271 pounds of spacewalk tools.

The space station crew will unload the gear inside the Dragon
spacecraft's internal module.

Two larger payload packages inside the Dragon's unpressurized
section will be removed and stowed on the space station using the
outpost's Canadian robotic arm and Dextre robot.

The optical communications and high-definition video systems carried
inside the Dragon's external trunk are the first large unpressurized
NASA experiments assigned for delivery to the space station by SpaceX.

The Dragon spacecraft is expected to remain attached to the space
station for about one month.

The cargo delivery mission is SpaceX's third operational resupply
flight under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA covering 12 missions
through 2016.

(ANS thanks Stephan Clark, Spaceflightnow.com for the above article)

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Lithuanian President’s greetings message sent from space

A greetings message from the President of the Republic of Lithuania
Dalia Grybauskaite, has been transmitted by the amateur radio
satellite LituanicaSAT-1. She is believed to be the first President
of any nation to have a greetings message sent from space since
President Eisenhower in 1958.

In 2013 the President of the Republic of Lithuania, Dalia
Grybauskaite. visited the Science Communication and Information
Center (SCIC) at Vilnius University. There she saw the amateur radio
CubeSat LituanicaSAT-1. Using a handheld radio and the call sign LY5N
she transmitted through the satellite’s FM voice transponder.

Her words “Greetings to all Lithuanians around the world” were
recorded on a memory chip in the satellite and the message was
successfully transmitted from space on March 22, 2014 at 04:17:38 UT.

LituanicaSAT-1 was launched to the International Space Station (ISS)
on January 9, 2014 and was deployed with other amateur radio
satellites on February 28.

The tiny satellite is just 10x10x10 cm with a mass of 1.090 kg yet
it has a VGA camera and a 145/435 MHz FM voice transponder, designed
and built by Lithuanian radio amateurs.

The prototype of the FM repeater has been operating in the home of
its designer Žilvinas Batisa LY3H in Elektre.nai, Lithuania. Further
information at http://ly3h.epalete.com/?p=303

LituanicaSAT-1 CubeSat
http://amsat-uk.org/2014/02/27/lituanicasat-1-cubesat/

[ANS thanks AMSAT-UK for the above announcement]

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PRN codes for KickSat Sprites released

Zac Manchester KD2BHC has posted another update on the KickSat
CubeSat which will carry 104 tiny Sprite satellites into a 325×315 km
51.5 degree inclination orbit. The launch will be broadcast live on
NASA TV, which will also be streaming on Ustream.

UPDATE: The launch has been postponed, see
http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/009/140327delay/

For latest date check
http://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/

The primary launch date for the SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS 3 mission from
the Kennedy Space Center scheduled for March 31 at 0250 GMT has been
cancelled, no new launch date has been set.

Zac says “Since a laptop can only decode one or two Sprite signals
at a time, I’ve also been busy getting our radio upload page set up
so that you can record a pass without having to decode it in real-
time, upload the .wav file, and have all 104 Sprite signals decoded
on our server with the results emailed back to you. This will also
help our team collect as much data as possible from around the world.
The page will be live before launch.”

All of the 104 Sprite satellites transmit on the same frequency.
Each Sprite has a unique pair of Pseudo-Random Number (PRN) codes
that it encodes its transmissions with, allowing a receiver to tell
the Sprites apart (this is known as CDMA). A list of all Sprite PRN
codes codes is available at

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArAGbHISj5okdEhBbkZiWGxBS
jNmcEs4ZkgwMmNsUEE&usp=sharing

KickSat Google Group
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum

KickSat Sprite Ground Station by Andy Thomas G0SFJ
http://kicksat.wordpress.com/support/kicksat-ground-station/

British Interplanetary Society: Sprite Technical Summary
http://www.bis-space.com/2013/03/09/9301/kicksat-technical-summary

KickSat Amateur Radio Information
https://github.com/zacinaction/kicksat/wiki/Radio-Info

Setting up a ground station
https://github.com/zacinaction/kicksat/wiki/Setting-Up-A-Ground-
Station

Watch a video of the planned deployment at
http://amsat-uk.org/2014/03/03/mass-launch-of-437-mhz-satellites/

[ANS thanks AMSAT-UK for the above information]

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New frequency for Ukrainian PolyITAN-1 CubeSat

The IARU Satellite Frequency Coordination Panel have announced a new
frequency for the Ukrainian amateur radio CubeSat PolyITAN-1, planned
to launch from Yasny in Russia.

IARU say the new frequency of 437.675 MHz was needed to avoid
interference occurring with another spacecraft on the same launch.

PolyITAN-1 was built by students at the Kiev National University
“KPI” in cooperation with the Ukrainian ham radio community.

The mission is to launch Ukrainian educational satellite build by
KPI students and space exploration enthusiasts. Specific mission
targets are:
• Develop, build, test, launch and operate a Ukrainian small
satellite platform based on the CubeSat standard.
• Conduct mission experiments with following payloads:
.  o Sun sensor
.  o Attitude position and orientation system including system
software
.  o Test on-board GLONASS/GPS navigation subsystem
• Build ground segment infrastructure for satellite communication
• Develop and test onboard and ground telecommunication software,
implement telecommunication protocols
• Establish cooperation between educational institute, space
agency(s) and various government authorities, Ham radio community

PolyITAN-1 is a 1U CubeSat which will have a 1200 bps AFSK AX25 600
mW downlink on 437.675 MHz. It will also have a CW beacon (EM0UKPI).

Architecture Design of PolyITAN-1
http://congress.cimne.com/eucass2013/admin/files/fileabstract/a272.pdf

PolyITAN-1 in Google English http://tinyurl.com/PolyITAN-1
Original text http://amsat.at.ua/

UY2RA Blog Post http://tinyurl.com/UY2RA-Blog-Post

[ANS thanks AMSAT-UK for the above information]

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Upcoming AMSAT Events

Information about AMSAT activities at other important events around
the country.  Examples of these events are radio club meetings where
AMSAT Area Coordinators give presentations, demonstrations of working
amateur satellites, and hamfests with an AMSAT presence (a table with
AMSAT literature and merchandise, sometimes also with presentations,
forums, and/or demonstrations).

Saturday, 5 April 2014 – The Greater Baltimore Hamboree and
Computerfest 2014, including the Maryland Emergency Preparedness Expo
2014, at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium MD.  AMSAT will
have a booth at this hamfest, and other AMSAT-related events may be
planned.

Saturday, 5 April 2014 – Amateur Radio Club of Parker County‘s
Weatherford Hamfest at the Central Christian Church in Weatherford TX
(west of Fort Worth).  AMSAT will have a table at this event, and
there may be satellite demonstrations during the hamfest.

Monday, 28 April 2014 – presentation at Franklin County Amateur
Radio Club meeting in Greenfield MA by Barry Baines WD4ASW (AMSAT
President)

Saturday, 3 May 2014 – Cochise Amateur Radio Association‘s Larry
Warren Hamfest in Sierra Vista AZ (southeast of Tucson) – AMSAT will
have a table at this hamfest, and satellite demonstrations are
planned.

Saturday, 7 June 2014 – Kachina Amateur Radio Club‘s White Mountain
Hamfest in Show Low AZ (eastern Arizona, south of US-60/AZ-77/AZ-260)
– AMSAT will have a table at this hamfest, and satellite
demonstrations are planned.

Friday and Saturday, 13-14 June 2014 – Ham-Com in Plano TX (north of
Dallas)

Thursday through Sunday, 17-20 July 2014 – ARRL Centennial
Convention in Hartford CT.  AMSAT will host a day-long Satellite
Workshop on Thursday, and have a booth at the convention along with
an AMSAT Forum and demonstrations throughout the convention.

Saturday and Sunday, 30-31 August 2014 – Shelby Hamfest in Shelby NC
(west of Gastonia and Charlotte) – Barry Baines WD4ASW (AMSAT
President) will host an AMSAT Forum on Saturday of this weekend

Friday through Sunday, 12-14 September 2014 – ARRL Southwestern
Division Convention 2014 in San Diego CA (north of the city center,
near Montgomery Field airport & I-805/CA-163 interchange) – AMSAT
will have a booth at this convention, there will be on-air
demonstrations using satellites throughout the convention, and a
presentation on amateur satellites and AMSAT

AMSAT maintains and updated list of known upcoming events at
http://ww2.amsat.org/?page_id=218

[ANS thanks AMSAT-NA for the above announcement]

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ARISS News

Recent Contacts:

A telebridge contact via W6SRJ with students at Melbourne Grammar
School – Grimwade House, Caulfield, Victoria, Australia was
successful Tue 2014-03-25 08:43:15 UTC 79 deg.
Astronaut Koichi Wakata, KC5ZTA answered 20 questions for students.

Melbourne Grammar School – Grimwade House is a co-educational
Primary School with 650 students aged from 5 to 12 years old.
Grimwade House bases its education on the Australian Curriculum. One
of the Major Learning Areas outlined in the Australian Curriculum is
Science.  Grimwade House is fortunate to have a purpose built Science
room and a teacher who is dedicated to and passionate about the
teaching of Science. All students from Prep to Year 4 have one lesson
of Science per week and Year 5 and Year 6 students have a double
lesson of Science each fortnight.

Lesson topics:
       - Students investigate features of the Earth’s interior
       - Students investigate the relative distances of the planets
in our solar system
       - Students investigate constellations seen in the night skies
in the Southern Hemisphere
       - Students investigate shadows and their relationship to light
sources in Space
       - Students investigate propulsion
       - Students investigate insulation and other elements
astronauts need to consider when exploring our place in Space.

Next planned event(s): Events will resume in April

There are no ARISS planned ARISS contacts due to crew schedules and
resupply mission schedules.

ARISS is an international educational outreach program partnering
the participating space agencies, NASA, Russian Space Agency, ESA,
CNES, JAXA, and CSA, with the AMSAT and IARU organizations from
participating countries.

ARISS offers an opportunity for students to experience the
excitement of Amateur Radio by talking directly with crewmembers on-
board the International Space Station. Teachers, parents and
communities see, first hand, how Amateur Radio and crewmembers on ISS
can energize youngsters' interest in science, technology, and
learning. Further information on the ARISS program is available on
the website
http://www.ariss.org/
(graciously hosted by the Radio Amateurs of Canada).

[ ANS thanks ARISS for the above update]

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Satellite Shorts from all over

Chichijima Island Satellite Operation Planned

Makoto, JI5RPT, will once again be active as JD1BLY from Chichijima
Island (AS-031), Ogasawara, between April 27th and May 5th. Activity
will be on 40-6 meters, including the satellites, using CW, SSB and
the Digital modes (NO 6m EME). QSL via his home callsign JI5RPT.
His log search will be available on his Web site at:
                          http://www.ji5rpt.com/jd1
He will also use Twitter to inform his real-time activities at:
                          http://twitter.com/jd1bly

[ANS thanks Ohio/Penn DX Bulletin No. 1155]

Registration for SA AMSAT Symposium Now Open

Registration for the SA AMSAT space symposium is now open. The sym-
posium will be held on Saturday 24 May 2014 at the Innovation Hub
in Pretoria. You get discounts for booking early and if you are an
SARL or SA AMSAT member. Get all details on www.amsatsa.org.za

[ANS thanks the SARL NEWS SUNDAY 23 MARCH 2014]

New ISS Position weblink

ISS link where you can find live public data of the ISS yaw, pitch
and roll angles:

http://spacestationlive.nasa.gov/displays/adcoDisplay2.html

[ANS thanks ARISS and Gaston, ON4WF for the above information]

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/EX

In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership in the
President's Club. Members of the President's Club, as sustaining
donors to AMSAT Project Funds, will be eligible to receive addi-
tional benefits. Application forms are available from the AMSAT
Office.

Primary and secondary school students are eligible for membership
at one-half the standard yearly rate. Post-secondary school students
enrolled in at least half time status shall be eligible for the stu-
dent rate for a maximum of 6 post-secondary years in this status.
Contact Martha at the AMSAT Office for additional student membership
information.

73,
This week's ANS Editor,
Joe Spier, K6WAO
k6wao at amsat dot org