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I de senaste nyhetsbreven från ANS har det varit många intressanta nyheter. Här kommer en sammanställning:

Announcing EO-79 transponder testing for one full orbit – May 4

Wouter Weggelaar PA3WEG from AMSAT-NL reported via the AMSAT-BB that
on Monday May, there is a fairly high chance that the AMSAT-NL
transponder will be tested for one full orbit.

Details will be made available on short notice, but the target time
for an activation starts at approximately 08:30 UTC and may last
until about 10:10 UTC.

The aim of the test is to characterize the power budget on board EO-
79. Usage of the transponder is being encourage. Please also report
the QSOs and signal reports to pa3weg at amsat.org

[ANS thanks Wouter Wouter PA3WEG for the above information]

EO-79 / QB50p1 First Transponder Test Success

AMSAT-NL is delighted to announce that an initial series of tests of
the FUNcube transponder payload aboard the QB50p1 CubeSat have been
successfully completed.

QB50p1 is one of two QB50 precursor spacecraft that were launched
from Yasny in Russia in June 2014.

The primary science payloads are still being extensively tested but
it has now been possible to undertake a short test of the transponder
payload as well. The transponder is intended as a long term secondary
mission following the initial technology demonstration and de-risking
phase.

After spending ten months in space, the transponder was commanded on
for short periods during each of the three morning passes over Europe
on Monday 27th April 2015. A number of FUNcube team members in the
Netherlands and in the UK were standing by to run through a
predefined test plan.

The transponder has a similar performance to that of FUNcube-1 but
the passband is nominally 5 kHz wider by design.

It is not yet known when this transponder may be available for
regular usage but AMSAT-NL is delighted to be able to report that the
hardware is functioning and is very grateful to the QB50 project, the
Von Karman Institute and ISIS B.V. for their ongoing support.

More information about the QB50 project can be found at
https://www.qb50.eu/

AMSAT-NL: http://amsat-nl.org

AMSAT-UK: http://amsat-uk.org

[ANS Thanks Graham G3VZV for the above information]

AMSAT-SM donates $1600 USD for the FOX satellite project

“AMSAT-SM believe that FOX project is very important to continue to
develop amateur radio on board satellites. We therefore hope that our
contribution can help the FOX satellites up in space.”

AMSAT-SM in Sweden has aprox 150 members. Membership is currently
free and registration is done online at our website: www.amsat.se

[ANS thanks Lars Thunberg SM0TGU for the above information]

Work Fox-1A at Dayton

Bring your HT to Dayton Hamvention, you can work each other on the Fox-1
engineering unit repeater at the AMSAT Engineering Booth!

Uplink: 435.180 MHz FM, CTCSS 67.0 Hz
Downlink: 145.980 MHz FM ± Doppler (which should be minimal)

[ANS thanks Jerry Buxton, N0JY, AMSAT VP Engineering, for the above
information]

7th European CubeSat Symposium

7th European CubeSat Symposium that will take place at Liège (Belgium) on 9-11
September 2015. The Symposium is co-organized by the von Karman Institute and
the University of Liege (Space Structures and Systems Laboratory). As in the
previous years, the Symposium is open to all CubeSat community around the World.

For more information and deadlines, please visit the symposium website
www.cubesatsymposium.eu

Please remember to submit your abstract before the 15th June 2015.
If you are a student, please apply for the sponsorship before that date.

The Symposium will be followed by a short course in astrodynamics organized by
the University of Liège (more information at this link).

[ANS thanks Dr. Masutti for the above information]

ISS Ham Video transmitter now transmitting

Friday May 1st, 2015 the Ham Video transmitter on board the Columbus
module of the International Space Station was powered on and started
transmitting in “Blank Transmission” (BT) mode.

In this mode, the transmitter is operated without camera. The digital
TV signal is fully formatted, but the content of the video is black
and the content of the audio is at zero level. From a technical
perspective, the BT signal is all that is needed for testing and fine
tuning ground stations.

The European network of chained ground stations is presently nearly
complete. Six ground stations span the continent in “X” formation.
For each ascending pass over Europe, four stations provide about ten
minutes of solid copy and the same is true for descending passes:

– Ascending passes: Lisbon (Portugal ==> Poitiers (France) ==>
Casale Monferrato (North Italy ==> Kolo (Poland)
– Descending passes : Cork (Ireland) ==> Poitiers (France) ==>
Casale Monferrato (North Italy ==> Matera (South Italy.

The chained ground stations are streaming the digital video to the
BATC server (British Amateur Television Club). BATC set up a
multiviewer page, accessible at:

http://www.batc.tv/iss/

The page shows all six streams from the chained ground stations. Each
view can be maximized to full screen and the audio of each stream can
be set to level or muted.

Presently, active stations stream technical data provided by the
software developed by Jean Pierre Courjaud F6DZP. Several data are
most interesting to observe:
– the “constellations”, which visualize the QPSK (quaternary PSK)
modulated signal
– the digital Signal/Noise ratio = MER (dB) (Modulation Error Ratio)
– the control LEDs that change from red to green on decoding the
digital signal.

The Ham Video transmitter frequency is 2395MHz and the symbol rate is 2.0Ms/sec.
More information is available at:

http://www.ariss-eu.org/columbus.htm

The Ham Video transmitter will stay on as long as on board operations
permit. When the ground stations will be operating reliably, the Ham
Video transmitter will be used to enhance ARISS school contacts.
Uplink will remain VHF audio only. This operational mode is dubbed
ARISS Ham TV.

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

By SM0TGU

Webmaster and member of the AMSAT-SM steering group.

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