Category: Ham Satellite news

Cubesat AESP-14 släpptes ut från ISS den 5:e februari 2015. Kort efter släppet var meningen att den skulle börja sända sin telemetri på 437.600 MHz med en uteffekt på 500 mW. Men hittills har ingen hörts från satelliten och nu ber AESP-14 teamet om hjälp. Läs mer nedan:

On Thursday, February 5 the Brazilian satellite AESP-14 was deployed from
the International Space Station (ISS) but so far no signals have been heard.
The AESP-14 telemetry beacon has a power output of 500 mW and uses AX.25 on
437.600 MHz with 9600 bps GMSK modulation (G3RUH standard). It should have
started transmitting 30 minutes after deployment but as of Thursday night
nothing had been heard. It may be the battery did not survive several months
without being recharged or the antenna may have failed to deploy.

The AESP-14 team would like to ask the help of radio amateurs around the
world to forward any received telemetry frames back to the team. For this,
please save the AX.25 frames in KISS format and forward the file to
aesp14@ita.br. The satellite was sent to the ISS as cargo on the SpaceX
Falcon 9 mission CRS-5. Launch had been scheduled for December 16, 2014 but
was postponed three times and it wasn’t until January 10, 2015 that the
launch eventually took place. Since arriving at the ISS on January 12
AESP-14 has been awaiting deployment by the JEM Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD)
which is in the Japanese Kibo module.

The satellite has an amateur radio experiment developed by the Americana
Amateur Radio Club (CRAM). The experiment consists of the random
transmission of 100 sequences of ASCII characters prefixed with the “CRAM”
word that will used as part of a contest among receiving stations. The first
10 amateur radio stations that complete receiving the 100 sequences will be
awarded a commemorative diploma.
Further details at
http://wabicafe.com.br/aesp14/cram.php

AESP-14 website
http://www.aer.ita.br/~aesp14

[ANS thanks the AESP-14 Team and the Southgate ARC for the above information]

Det är intressant att läsa hur astronauterna upplever alla dessa skolkontakter som pågår hela tiden. Vackra ord….

Abstract from ESA Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti’s logbook

Yesterday, December 15, I had my first HAM radio contact with school pupils.
A big hello to the students of the schools “Elena di Savoia” in Bari and
“Alessandro Volta” in Bitonto!  It was fun talking to you and thanks for the
great questions!

Amateur radio contacts between astronauts and school kids have a long
tradition on ISS, thanks to a little army of volunteers in many countries
who work with the local schools not only on the day of contact, but also in
the weeks and months leading up to the event: they teach students about
radio technology and about space, to get them ready and hopefully excited
about the event.

From my side, I only needed to be ready on the proper channel at the proper
time: it is very important, because we need direct line-of-sight with the
amateur radio station on the ground and the pass is only about ten minutes
long. A couple of minutes before the expected acquisition-of-signal time, I
started making calls to check if someone was already picking me up.
Eventually I picked up a call from the ground station and sure enough, we
started our conversation. I heard them loud and clear, which positively
surprised me: somehow I expected signal quality not to be as good. I hope
they had the same quality on the other side.

On such contacts, there’s no time for small talk and formalities: in less
than ten minutes, we had to make sure that the 20 students who were lined up
to ask their question got their chance. So here I was, ready to go. And here
came the first question – are you ready? Here’s it is:
“ It is known that people become taller when they are in space. What happens
to bio-molecules? Is there any alteration in the tertiary structure of
proteins?”

I almost fell off my chair… well, if I had had a chair. (Wonder what a good
equivalent of this expression would be in weightlessness… any suggestions?)

Where are the good old question about space food and the space toilet? Jokes
apart, I was really impressed with all the questions: they showed a great
interest and knowledge in science and technology and gave me great hope for
our future generations of scientists and engineers. Keep up the great work,
girls and boys.

73,

Samantha Cristoforetti – IZ0UDF

Då har raketen Delta II lyft kl 14:22 UTC 2015-01-31 med fyra Cubesats ombord som har amatörradio på 70cm enligt följande (thank you DK3WN for info and frq. image):

Firebird-II FU3         437.405 MHz 19k2 FSK
Firebird-II FU4	        437.230 MHz 19k2 FSK
GRIFEX                  437.485 MHz 9k6 FSK
Exocube (CP-10)         437.270 MHz 9k6 FSK



Prel. kepler:

FIREBIRD-2
1 99991U          15031.59770833 -.00004251  00000-0 -23226-3 0 00004
2 99991 099.0993 037.3071 0163133 342.7168 145.9497 15.03560207000016
GRIFEX
1 99992U          15031.59770833 -.00004273  00000-0 -23822-3 0 00001
2 99992 099.0990 037.3077 0161465 342.2732 146.5309 15.03090041000011
EXOCUBE
1 99993U 00000    15031.59770833 -.00004217  00000-0 -23542-3 0 00009
2 99993 099.0988 037.3072 0161497 341.7791 147.0546 15.03038398000014

Uppdaterat kl 20:00 31/1:

Flera som avkodat: http://www.dk3wn.info/p/

Och PE0SAT som av avkodat GRIFEX: http://www.pe0sat.vgnet.nl/2015/grifex-active-and-decoded/

AESP-14  är en satellit som är på gång att släppas ut från ISS. Den har en ganska stark sändare på 500 mW på 437.600 MHz och den använder 9600 bps G3RUH modulation (GFSK) och AX.25 UI. Mer info på: http://www.aer.ita.br/~aesp14/index.html

Jag har fällt ned min  VHF mast för lite antennarbete och passade då på att provköra några kontakter med enkla medel.

Jag monterade upp min satellitrotor på ett litet rör 1,5 meter över backen samt satte dit en 10 EL på 70 cm. För sändning använde jag en vanlig 5/8 GP på taket.

När jag precis skulle förlora satelliten så körde jag OH8MBN med  5-5 i rapport och vi hade båda två satelliten på ett avstånd i närheten av 3000 km.

Ett litet tänkvärt experiment som visar att man med enkla medel kan montera en liten minimast i trädgården med all elektronik lättåtkomlig och ändå göra bra resultat.