Saturday, May 24, 2014

After a wonderful day at the SA AMSAT satellite symposium I have learned the following.

After a wonderful day at the SA AMSAT satellite symposium I found the following very interesting. (24May2014)
http://www.amsatsa.org.za/
  1. KLETSkous the 1U Cubesat build by volunteer Amateur Radio operators.



The planned payload for KLETSkous will be as follows.

  • A Linear transponder (2m uplink and 70 cm downlink)bandwidth of 20 kHz
  • Currently the frequencies in the 435.100 to 435.140 MHz range are considered for the uplink and 145.860 to 145.980 MHz for the downlink
  • The scientific payload will be a experiment analysing "Worm Holes"  (This experiment will try and find the portholes between Sun and Earth).
  • There was a live Transponder demo and a prototype of the space frame.


More information is available at http://www.amsatsa.org.za/



2) A presentation on the progress of the experiments on ZACube-1 was also very interesting.
ZACUBE-1 Cube sat Picture

  • Very nice pictures were captured from the VGA cameras.
  • Beacon TX power was also increased and should be easier to capture the signals.
  • They are now slowly deploying the long wire HF antenna in the following few weeks to enable the HF experiments.
More info available at http://www.cput.ac.za/blogs/fsati/zacube-1/

3) A presentation on the experiments of a Satellite propulsion system (Vacuum Arc Thruster)
Vacuum Arc Thruster
  • Vacuum arc thrusters are a potentially useful technology for use as microthrusters on microsats for the future.
  • It is basically a spark plug that generate sparks in a vacuum to propel the satellite. by (Jonathan Lun PhD Student SANSA Space Science,University of the Witwatersrand)