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)