This may be of interest to some.






Microchip Engineers Built Amateur Satellite That Deploys From International Space Station Tomorrow Morning


Satellite Design Team Launches Blog About Project; Deployment to be Broadcast Live on NASA TV and Online
A volunteer team of Microchip engineers spent nearly four years working nights and weekends to develop the ARISSat-1 amateur satellite. Their hard work will come to fruition tomorrow (Wednesday) morning at 7:30 a.m. (Pacific Time), when the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to deploy the satellite during a spacewalk. The deployment will be broadcast live on NASA TV and online.  
 


Additionally, ARISSat-1 design-team leader Steven Bible launched the limited-series Chips in Space Blog on EE Times' web site last week, to both educate and entertain readers by relating the story of how he and his colleagues came to build the satellite, and the challenges they faced along the way.  Bible will also provide analysis of the satellite's deployment and functionality.
ARISSat-1 is the prototype test flight for a proposed series of educational satellites being developed in a partnership with the Radio Amateur Satellite Corp. (AMSAT), the NASA Office of Education ISS National Lab Project, the Amateur Radio on ISS (ARISS) working group and RSC-Energia.  
If all goes well with tomorrow's deployment, it will perform the following primary functions:  
Two-way communication via UHF uplink and VHF downlink, for use by ham radio operators
Visuals of space from four cameras
Recharging of the satellite's battery using solar panels, enabling months of operation
Transmission of audio greetings in many languages, for reception via simple radios or scanners
Telemetry transmissions with updates on the health of the satellite
House an experiment from Russia's Kursk University that measures atmospheric pressure

You might want to follow the thread on QRZ.com. The sat was deployed without its UHF antenna.

Watched the first 30 mins of the spacewalk. They were man-handling the thing and it was bangiing on stuff. I don't treat toasters that way. Seeing how the sat was treated it wouldn't surprise me something got broken in the process. When the question of whether an antenna was broken off one of the cosmonauts stated, "I've been here 3 months and this thing has always had one antenna."

Didn't give me the warm fuzzies.

Was the cosmonaut IBEW?

open the window and toss it out there

You gotta be kidding...




Listening for it on 146.958

and we just sold out the space shuttle commuting processes to these russian yehoos?

Nope!  CWA.

HEY! I resemble that remark...

Apparently even with the busted off UHF uplink antenna the thing is working. There are reports of successful contacts.

http://arissat1.org/v3/

tag

I listened all last night to 145.958 NFM and never hear the sq break or at least didn't wake me up.

Anyone heard anything or am I doing something wrong?

Does the sat have the ability to orient itself for the cameras or does it tumble?

When trying to hit a sat, you need to have the sq set to zero, although it is FM the signals are significantly weak compared to a repeater. If you google amateur radio satellite you can check out some neat YouTube video's.

ETA: The sat tumbles through space so you will have some picket fencing as the antenna rotates out of LOS.

Did they really break the uplink antenna off?

I
Busted
Every
Wire

Is there telemetry on this?  How can I track/predict it?
 

If only I had a 2-meter SSB radio....

I resemble that remark

I think I have too much RFI from the inverter, IP radios, etc, etc.

I'm going to have to move the antenna maybe 20 or 30 feet away and try again.

I also have a GasFet preamp I can put inline.