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Another Amateur Radio Satellite
k4hg writes "Remember the US Naval Academy satellite with the measuring tape antennas?
Well, not only is it still alive after nearly four years in orbit (be sure to read the 2001 Slashdot articles to see who was right and wrong about it working at all!), but the latest satellite to come out of the same lab, called PCSat2, was installed Wednesday on the International Space Station. It is bolted to the space station on the P6 truss, but is otherwise independent, only benefiting from the high mass to drag ratio of the ISS to prolong orbital life. The satellite is alive and transmitting on amateur radio frequencies, I could hear it on a marginal elevation in the Florida Keys. When it come in range of a ground station with better coverage, the data will be viewable here in real time. This new system is in addition to the amateur radio station already operational on the ISS.
And yes, they used tape measure antennas again, you could see them deploy on Nasa TV!"
Not only does this satellite transmit Amateur Radio waves, it measures the stars! :)
Fallout 3 will suck.
Now I know how "normal" people feel when I start talking about code.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The thing may be cheap to build, but you can not just throw it up there like a kite, it needs a rocket to get it into orbit. the price does not reflect this cost.
To Hell with the Queen of England!
Is there a type of elevation in the florida Keys _other_ than marginal?
/*sarcasm*/
Marginal elevation: Elevation due to a stick of margarine. The low cholesterol alternative to butteral elevation.
A school science experiment in the form of an amateur radio satellite. Shuttle to deliver it, ISS to 'hold it up', finally, the pair of them actually doing something useful....
02:11:26:12 : W3ADO-1]BEACON,SGATE,qAo,N1GAU-15:T#014,066,058,05 8,087,213,11111111,0001,1
Enlighten me, please...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
OK, I'm not a ham but I have a couple of scanners. My question is, how can I eavesdrop on the ISS and/or STS shuttle missions? Some web searching has led to 145.8000 and 146.6550 as the ISS and STS audio downlinks, respectively; however, monitoring them even when ISS is over North America doesn't get me anything.
Are there other interesting frequencies, or does the ISS/STS have to be "exactly overhead" in order to pick up on their transmissions? I presume that if Houston is able to pick them up, I should be able to, also; but I'm not a radio engineer. I'm in west Tennessee and haven't been able to locate any repeaters of the ISS/STS frequencies anywhere nearby.
Any help out there?
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
So directly murdering someone "comes close" to what Bush does? I'd love to know what you think he did that was that bad.
Shouldn't that "Yet Another Amateur Radio Satellite"?
Did someone miss a chance to add "Yet" to derive a "Yet Another Names Starting With Yet"
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
Yes the satellite is still operational, too bad the website isn't :)
But, frankly, it seems the history of science in LEO is pretty poor. Aside from using LEO as a convenient spot to look down upon the Earth or up at the stars, that is...
Can any Slashdotters make a convincing case that science on the ISS is a vaguely good use of funds? In the sense of "the scientific payoff is likely worth it in the first place", not "well, we've spent $100 billion now, we may as well spend the remaining $10 billion".
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
WTF does this have to do with satellites???
Those were made from measuring tapes, right?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
You know people, I'm usually not one to say anything good about a Democrat, but you have to admire Kennedy as being the first Senator to post on Slashdot.
I've been watching the shuttle mission on the K6BEN amateur TV repeater near San Jose, which is on 421.25Mhz, the same as cable (not broadcast) channel 57, through my VCR and with a Yagi I made from a magazine article. The NASA Ames Amateur Radio Club is providing the feed with a 1.2GHz uplink to the repeater. They also have shuttle audio on two meters, and I can receive that with my VX-2R HT.
only benefiting from the high mass to drag ratio of the ISS to prolong orbital life.
Err.. and the fact that visiting cargo ships occasionally give the ISS orbit a boost.
If they keep doing that every couple of years, the ISS orbit will never have a chance to critically decay and will be up there forever.
There's supposedly no SPAM.
this is not realy new, as it was first used on the AMSAT P3-B (aka OSCAR-10) spacecraft. Because there was not enough room inside the SPELDA adaptor, the 2m (145 MHz)antennas were folded. Once the S/C was separated, they automatically deployed.. Measuring tape was the easiest and cheapest to use, and it worked perfect..
PCSat2 .Info page (with images)
You can kind of see it mounted on the ISS.
I'm a 2000 man.
Is it Imperial or Metric?
Because I'm in Europe, and need to know if I'll be able to listen in.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
All the payload adds extra mass you fucking imbecile - extra mass means extra fuel.
Not to pan amateur radio (I wish I had my license) but why the excitement about hearing a signal from a couple hundred miles away? If that guy in Key West had a chat with another amateur in, say, Pensacola, that would be routine.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Amateur Radio satellite? Is that like Sirius or XM only not-for-profit?
I hope he doesn't try to "liberate" me with a a 1000lb bomb dropped by an F/A-18.
The very first amateur radio satelite, OSCAR-I used tape antennas back in 1961. The antennas were made out of steel measuring tapes because they could be folded back against the satelite during launch and would spring into position as the satelite separated from the rocket. The tapes are 1/4 wavelength long, which at 2 meters (145 mhz) is about 19" long. Most satelites operate at higher frequencies, though the amateur 10 meter band at 28mhz is also available for satelite use. You do the math to see how long those antennas would be....(75/frequency in mhz = length in meters for a 1/4 wave antenna)
I know replying to an AC is useless, but the assertion that extra mass means extra fuel isn't always true.
Many of the early small Amateur Satellites were launched for free as the ballast of larger commercial sats. Commercial launchers must add ballast to their payloads if the main payload's CG is not over its center. As long as the Amateur sat is space-rated and the right shape, size, and weight as the needed ballast, why not launch it instead of inert ballast that will just re-enter?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
You'll have to wait for the dupe.
I think I hear it approaching now...
When we designed the SPARTAN Packet Radio Experiment, we designed and used a microstrip antenna (aka patch antenna) for VHF communications. It makes a lot more sense for a space payload to use patch antennas rather than anything that sticks out of the side of the spacecraft.
Here is a good wideband VHF/UHF microstrip antenna example.
If you need a JPole here's the place to get one
Must have something to do with "amatuer satellite governments."
australian project gutenberg is better than the original.
mod parent down.
User links to a site that does malicious things to the browser(Firefox)
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
02:03:26:43 : KC9XG]APRS,PCSAT2*,qAC,KC9XG:] IGNORE ALogger A side test digi packet
02:03:26:44 : PCSAT2]APRLTM,SGATE,qAO,KC9XG:T# IGNORE ALogger A side test packet
???
Profit!
actually theres a really large trash heap you can get some elevation on.
they have an interesting way of getting rid of trash here. they compress it and pile it up and then throw dirt over the top of it. it creates these MASSIVE pretty green hills as the natural tendency of any field or pile of dirt is to sprout grass.
my coworker here refers to the big one in south of miami in cutler ridge as 'mount trashmore'
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
The fact that it's a couple hundred miles up is what makes it different. Sure, getting a signal from Pensacola to Key West wouldn't be a big deal today, because you can retransmit the signal via repeaters located up and down the peninsula. (Or use HF, which is a completely different technical challenge, but is pretty well understood.)
Imagine trying to get a signal from Key West to a point equally far away, but without any repeaters or being able to use longer frequencies for the HF advantage -- that's more like what space communications are like. It's a whole new ball game.
Furthermore, there's just something different when it comes to being in space at all. Even if there weren't the technical challenges involved, it would still be interesting to do, because it's just fascinating to be directly involved with something that's orbiting the earth. I understand that might not ring everyone's bells exactly, but for some of us it's a pretty attractive draw.
Asking 'what's the big deal, it's only a few hundred miles' is kind of like asking someone who's going on a submarine down to the Titanic: 'what's the big deal, it's only three miles...'
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you are a meathead
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