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Ham Satellite news

Tevel Re-Entry

From ANS-203:

The Tevel series of satellites is approaching re-entry, with Tevel-5 already re-entering on July 18th.

The Tevel mission consists of 8 satellites developed by the Herzliya Science Center in Israel, each carrying an FM transponder. The satellites were built by 8 schools in different parts of Israel and launched in January 2022 on the SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-3 mission.

A number of other satellites with amateur radio payloads are also re-entering shortly. A list of satellites approaching re-entry can be found at http://lu7aa.org/decay.asp

[ANS thanks Herzliya Science Center, AMSAT Argentina, and LU7AA for the above information]

Categories
Ham Satellite news

AMSAT-EA GENESIS-A Module

Re-post from ANS-189:

The maiden flight of the new European launcher, Ariane 6, is scheduled for July 9, 2024, with a launch window of 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. local time from the European spaceport in French Guiana (July 9 20:00h to July 10 00:00h CEST). Among many other payloads, it carries our (inside YPSAT) GENESIS-A module, attached to the second stage of the launcher. The module will transmit FT8 and live SSTV images in Robot 36 format.

FT8 transmissions are made every 16 seconds, while SSTV’s are every 5 minutes.

The working frequencies are as follows:

Downlink 144.175 MHz FT8 Mode:

– Callsign AO4ARI HO60 if the antenna has been deployed
– Callsign AO4ARI HO61 if the antenna has not been deployed

Downlink 144.550 MHz SSTV Robot 36 mode with live image and Hades text

A carrier with a frequency of 144.550 MHz (same frequency as SSTV) is left between FT8 tones.

This information is compiled in PDF in the following document on our web:
https://www.amsat-ea.org/app/download/13458580/AMSAT+EA+-+GENESIS-A+transmissions+description.pdf

The only thing ESA has given us is the trajectory over the ground while flying over Europe, but we don’t have TLEs or anything that we can semi-automate. It is available on our website:
https://www.amsat-ea.org/s/cc_images/cache_19006006.jpg?t=1720182961

It will be very difficult to receive it but we thank you all if you try and if you spread this information to have all possible operators tuned into FT-8 that day. The module will fall into the sea with the second stage after a few hours.

More information about the flight including timings here:
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ariane/Ariane_6_launch_how_to_watch_and_what_to_look_out_for

[ANS thanks Félix Páez, EA4GQS, AMSAT EA, for the above information]

Categories
Ham Satellite news

MESAT and other satellites July 2024

Re-post from ANS-189:

Firefly Delivers New Amateur Satellites to Orbit

The Firefly Alpha FLTA005/NASA ELaNa 43 mission, nicknamed “Noise of Summer,” launched successfully at 04:04 UTC on July 4 (Wednesday evening, July 3 in the U.S.) and deployed eight new cube satellites to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Five of these cubesats carry amateur radio equipment.

The cubesats were placed into a sun-synchronous Earth orbit, meaning that all locations on earth will see high-elevation passes roughly between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. and between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. local time daily, with lower elevation passes earlier and later.

Among the newly-deployed satellites, the one of greatest interest to the amateur radio community is MESAT1. Built by the University of Maine, in cooperation with AMSAT, this satellite carries a 30 kHz wide V/U Transponder plus a 1k2 BPSK telemetry downlink. Telemetry downlink 435.800 MHz with transponder downlink 435.810-435.840 MHz, and transponder uplink 145.910-145.940 MHz. Amateurs are encouraged to use AMSAT’s FoxTelem software to collect telemetry.


MESAT1 involves three missions designed by high school students in Maine. The science payloads are climate focused and include ALBEDO, IMAGER, and HAB. These will identify urban heat islands, determine concentration of phytoplankton in water bodies, and help predict harmful algal blooms. Four multispectral cameras on board will relay the data down to University of Maine’s ground station for further processing. Amateurs are encouraged to use AMSAT’s FoxTelem software to collect telemetry and assist in these science projects.

Also deployed was CatSat, a technology demonstration of an inflatable antenna for high-speed communications, built by the University of Arizona. CatSat’s deployable antenna consists of a Mylar balloon. The front half of the balloon is transparent, allowing microwaves to pass through. The back half of the balloon is aluminized, creating a reflecting antenna. After reaching low Earth orbit, CatSat’s antenna will deploy and inflate to a diameter of just over one-and-a-half feet CatSat’s demonstration will be to transmit high-definition Earth photos to 10 GHz, X-band ground stations at ~50 megabits per second.


In addition to images, data about the structure of the Earth’s ionosphere will be gathered by listening-in to thousands of beacons from ground-based ham radio stations. CatSat will relay WSPR and FT8 signals from HF. Downlinks on 437.185 MHz and 10470.00 MHz.

Other satellites with IARU-coordinated amateur frequency downlinks include:

Serenity, which uses a 4k8 FM with AX25 downlink on 437.100 MHz. Serenity was built by Teachers in Space, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization in North America that stimulates student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). They provide teachers with real space science experiences, space flight opportunities, and industry connections.

KUbeSat-1, revives small satellite research at the University of Kansas and starts a new KUbeSat program that will offer space access to student research. The main payload on KUbeSat-1 is the Primary Cosmic Ray Detector which will use a new method to measure the energy and species of primary cosmic rays hitting the Earth. The secondary payload is the High-Altitude Calibration, (HiCalK) that builds on decades of research surrounding Very High Frequency signals generated by cosmic ray interactions with the atmosphere. UHF downlink using 9k6 GMSK. A downlink on 437.085 MHz.

SOC-i (Satellite for Optimal Control and Imaging) is a technology demonstration mission of attitude control technology and a camera that serves as an instrument to demonstrate SOC-i’s pointing abilities. Developed at the University of Washington, SOC-i has a UHF downlink using 4k8 GMSK. downlink 437.125 MHz.

[ANS thanks NASA, Firefly Aerospace, and Spacflight Now for the above information]

Categories
Ham Satellite news

MESAT-1 Scheduled for June 27 2024

Re-post from ANS-175

The University of Maine’s MESAT-1 carrying a telemetry transmitter and linear transponder provided by AMSAT and experiments designed by schools in Maine will head into orbit as early as late this week as part of NASA’s ELaNa 43 launch.

The ELaNa 43 (Educational Launch of Nanosatellites 43) mission includes eight CubeSats flying on Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket for its “Noise of Summer” launch from Space Launch Complex-2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The 30-minute launch window will open at 9 p.m. PDT Wednesday, June 26 (12 a.m. EDT Thursday, June 27).

Telemetry can be received using the same FoxTelem program that was used for most of AMSAT’s recent payloads. We urge readers to download the latest FoxTelem (V1.12z3) from https://www.amsat.org/tlm/leaderboard.php?id=0&db=FOXDB. This program will decode telemetry from MESAT-1 (as well as AO-91) and forward the results to AMSAT’s central server for use by AMSAT engineering as well as by Maine engineers and students.

MESAT-1 will study local temperatures across city and rural areas to determine phytoplankton concentration in bodies of water to help predict algal blooms and also contains a linear transponder for amateurs to use.  Watch ANS and other media for information about when the transponder will be activated.

For more information on this satellite, visit https://www.mainesat.org/mesat1/

MESAT-1 – Launch June 27, 2024
Uplink LSB145.910 MHzthrough145.940 MHz
Downlink USB435.810 MHzthrough435.840 MHz
AMSAT LTM-1 Transponder – 1200 bps FoxTelem BPSK beacon 435.800 MHz

[ANS thanks NASA and AMSAT Engineering for the above information]

Categories
Ham Satellite news

GOLF Program Updates

This is a re-post from ANS-161:

For those who missed the AMSAT Forum at the 2024 Hamvention, here is an excerpt from the engineering update presented by Jerry Buxton, N0JY, AMSAT VP-Engineering about the exciting GOLF program.

Some main events happening with the GOLF program. Golf is the acronym for Greater Orbit Larger Footprint. The program is a series of satellites for flight testing and qualifications. We will be looking at testing various devices and systems that we will need as we move to HEO. Each one carries an amateur radio payload that will continue once the main testing mission is complete.

We are looking to increase orbital heights but that is getting more difficult due to the orbital debris rules. Something that we have to harness before we get out of LEO is the ability to make accurate maneuvers and collision avoidance because there is a lot of traffic up there now and hopefully, we will be able to get beyond that and ultimately our perigee is still about 2,000 kilometers that exempt us from the orbital debris rules. But the fact that we can maneuver give us the opportunity not only for deorbiting when we need to but to raise or lower our orbit to a degree so we can have a longer mission.

Speaking of longer missions, survivability is a big thing especially as we get into the Van Allen radiation belt and such. As you get further away from LEO, there is a lot more radiation bombarding you so the idea of radiation tolerance for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts or in some cases when we do a HEO or a GTO we may want to use some radiation hardened parts so we get the best life out of it. So, what we’re looking at is the lowest cost versus performance. It’s a trade balance so we can keep as many satellites in space as we can successfully and return to HEO.

In order to do this, we’re going to master some satellite operations necessary for higher orbit. This doesn’t include engineering. It includes operations who will be controlling the satellites. They will need a good understanding of what the satellites will do and have good instructions to know how to control them.

Some of the main things we need for going higher are:

Power generation. We’re going to need more gain on your power amplifiers, for example to help overcome the link budget. SDR’s can get busy and require a bit of power. There are other systems that we will want to keep running as well as experiments. Power is a premium thing that we need, that is getting power generated by the sun.

Attitude detection and control systems. ADCS something that is vital to control the satellite to point for the best sun or to maneuver. We have to be pointed very precisely if we are going to fire any thrusters. And, we need to point our microwave antennas back toward earth.

Radiation tolerance is essential to survival. In the older satellites there weren’t so many chips, the IC’s if you will, so the analog parts, the carbon resistors and such were much hardier in the radiation belt.

Microwaves – We’re going to be moving into the microwaves. 10 GHz is the ultimate downlink band. There’s a lot of bandwidth up there with 10 GHz, X-Band for downlink and 5 GHz, the C-Band for uplink.

We are also adding 2.4 GHz, S-Band uplink because that is shared with Europe and QO-100.

Thrust and propulsion will be the icing on the cake.

We have to master all of this to be responsible spacefarers.

GOLF-TEE Mission
We have Golf-Tee which stands for Technology Exploration Environment. Key features of it are:

It has deployable solar panels that we are developing inhouse. These address the need for more power.

We have secured CubeSpace ADCS, that we will use for the Attitude Detection and Control System. We were working earlier with a startup that would have given us the opportunity to fly cheaper and be part of the development but that did not come to fruition. We looked at a long list of possible ADCS systems and decided that CubeSpace would be suitable for our GOLF-TEE, GOLF-ONE and possible beyond.

We have the RT-IHU, Radiation Tolerant Internal Housekeeping Unit, which was developed as an ASCENT project using COTS, commercial-off-the-shelf, parts intended to reduce the number of upsets that cause the IHU to “latch-up” and have to re-boot. We’re going to compare that to the IHU we had on the legacy LTM, linear transponder module, used in the FOX satellites to see if, with the South Atlantic anomaly problem, if we are doing any better with resets on each of those IHU systems.

For the 10 GHz X-Band we’re going to have an experimental microwave high speed data downlink which is tricky at LEO, but as we get higher at HEO there is a lot of data we will want to download, not to mention that from experiments. It also gives us an opportunity to possibly use it as a transponder where we would pick off the downlink from the V/U transponder and send it down on 10 GHz as an entryway for people to try working with the microwave bands.

For the GOLF-Tee mission, we are looking at a 500-550 km LEO orbit, accessible through a CSLI/ELaNa launch. Its purpose is to test and qualify new technologies. It will carry the Vanderbilt/ISDE Low Energy Proton Experiment that we have flown before. This will help provide a comparison of what the environment is like with the IHU, RT-IHU and L-IHU units.

We should have a good radio footprint at 550 km. It’s orbital debris regulation “friendly” because it will decay rather rapidly with the current sunspot cycle. We’ll see how that goes because when we go will make a difference.

GOLF-1 Mission
The goals for GOLF-1 are the same as GOLF-TEE that are, hopefully, developed quite well. In the meantime, though, if there are things with the construction or during the on-orbit phases, then hopefully we will have time to make adjustments to improve on things. That’s always the way you want to go with a series of similar satellites.

This will be a typical mission versus the technology mission that GOLF-TEE is. We will carry STEM, educational based experiments. We have a high school in the San Diego area that wants to fly a camera for earth weather views. We’ll fly the Vanderbilt/ISDE Student Radiation Experiment again because there are a lot of students who like to put those together and write papers.

We’ll expand the microwave/SDR experimentation. We’ll open up the Five and Dime – that’s the 5 GHz uplink to 10 GHz downlink. Of course, at LEO it is tricky at best. Nonetheless, it will be there for experimentation with GOLF-1.

The S-Band/X-Band transponder – 2.4 GHz uplink and 10 GHz downlink (a la QO-100) – will be available.

And, we have a L-Band 1.2 GHz uplink possibility. We aren’t certain what that will be used for, perhaps commands. It’s not a worldwide band so depending on resources, we’ll probably concentrate primarily on the other bands.

Again, we’ll have a standard V/U transponder operation. However, it will be the SDR, not the LTM so it gives us the opportunity to make the transponder a variety of things such as an FM repeater or a linear transponder.

Readiness Dates
The target Readiness Date for GOLF-TEE is December 1, 2025. The Readiness Date indicates to NASA that we are ready to hand it over for integration. Integration is the activity when the satellite is put into the dispenser that then goes to the rocket. NASA holds off basically until our CDR, or Comprehensive Design Review, which will be March 2025 and looking at that readiness date in order to judge when to find a good launch for us.

The integration is typically 45 days prior to launch therefore we would not see a launch until early 2026. But it could happen that fast as they have been pretty good at lining up some launches.

For GOLF-1 the Readiness Date would be a year later, December 27, 2026. Again, we want to look at everything we can learn from GOLF-Tee and put it into GOLF-1 and make it better.

GOLF-2 and Beyond
From GOLF-2 and beyond the push for opportunities, and I say it is a good push, opportunities for higher than LEO are going to require specialized systems. We know that and is why GOLF-2 will be testing more of these systems.

The deorbit devices are just coming to commercial availability in CubeSats which is very good. They were not available until just recently. We saw at the CDW, CubeSat Developers Workshop quite a few companies with some items coming out that are helpful to us. We have a team looking at thrusters and propulsion in the ASCENT group, ASCENT meaning Advanced Satellite Communications and Exploration of New Technology.

These things can be mastered, I like to use that word, developed and mastered in LEO. We’ll be careful about what we fly so it will be a successful mission as we go for those higher and more expensive orbits.

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

Categories
Ham Satellite news

Setting Up Your Own Satellite Ground Station with SatNOGS

This is a repost from ANS-154:

Robert Theiss, W5ITR, had the pleasure of interviewing Dan White, ADØCQ, from the Libre Space Foundation at the 2024 Dayton Hamvention about their innovative SatNOGS project. This initiative enables anyone to set up a satellite ground station, collect valuable data, and contribute to global satellite operations. You can watch the interview here on the Digital Rancher YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edNfD_YXZps

Dan explained that SatNOGS provides detailed blueprints and documentation for building a satellite ground station from scratch. The foundation offers the necessary software, identifies accessible hardware, and maintains the infrastructure that allows citizen scientists to engage in satellite-related sciences. Their vision of making outer space open and accessible through open-source technology is truly inspiring.

Setting up a basic SatNOGS station is surprisingly straightforward. All you need is a Raspberry Pi and an RTL-SDR dongle. Dan explained the process: the Libre Space Foundation provides a ready-to-use image for the Raspberry Pi, which includes the operating system and necessary configurations. You just create an account, register your station, and schedule a test observation.

Robert Theiss, W5ITR, interviews Dan White, ADØCQ, with Libre Space at the 2024 Dayton Hamvention. [Credit: Robert Theiss, W5ITR]

For those looking to enhance their setup, SatNOGS offers extensive documentation on building antennas and integrating additional components like low noise amplifiers and band pass filters. Although they plan to offer kits in the future, you can currently follow the detailed instructions and suggested links available on the SatNOGS Wiki: https://wiki.satnogs.org.

One of the most fascinating aspects of SatNOGS is its network of interconnected ground stations. Once your station is set up, it can schedule satellite passes and collect data, even while you’re asleep. This data is shared across the network, allowing other users to access it, and vice versa. This system ensures continuous monitoring and data collection, maximizing the utility of each station.

The SatNOGS community is highly active and supportive. The forums on the Libre Space Foundation’s website are a great resource for troubleshooting, sharing experiences, and staying updated on new satellite launches and developments.

Dan White, ADØCQ explains the makeup of their SatNOGS Demonstration Ground Station. [Credit: Robert Theiss, W5ITR]

For those interested in taking their ground station to the next level, SatNOGS supports more advanced setups with full azimuth and elevation rotators and larger antennas. These setups, while more costly, significantly increase data collection capabilities and overall performance. The Raspberry Pi used in the basic setup can interface with these advanced systems, allowing for automated tracking and data collection.

Dan shared insights into practical aspects such as bandwidth requirements and equipment wear and tear. While the data collected by a SatNOGS station can be bandwidth-intensive, there are settings to optimize for lower bandwidth situations by disabling audio uploads. Additionally, proper setup and maintenance of antennas and rotators can ensure long-term operation without significant issues.

The Libre Space Foundation and its SatNOGS project provide a unique opportunity for anyone interested in satellite and space communications to get involved. Their open-source approach and comprehensive support make it accessible even for beginners. Setting up your own satellite ground station is a rewarding experience, contributing to global space exploration and satellite communication. Check out the resources at https://satnogs.org and get involved!

[ANS thanks Robert Theiss, W5ITR, for the above information]