ARTSAT-Invader Digi-Talker active 22-05-2014 18:34 UTC
1:Fm JQ1ZKK To JQ1ZKL [20:34:22R] r-g-c-msr 1:Fm JQ1ZKK To JQ1ZKL [20:34:23R] r-g-c-dof 1:Fm JQ1ZKK To JQ1ZKL [20:35:02R] r-g-c-dof 1:Fm JQ1ZKK To JQ1ZKL [20:35:03R] r-g-c-dof 1:Fm JQ1ZKK To JQ1ZKL [20:35:04R] r-g-c-dof 1:Fm JQ1ZKK To JQ1ZKL [20:35:06R] r-g-c-nsd 1:Fm JQ1ZKK To JQ1ZKL [20:35:36R] r-g-p-msd
This week we’re celebrating UWE-3 “Six months in Space” with a highlight created out of the on-board ADCS data recorded.
Attitude Determination during pass over Wuerzburg
Already in January the satellite obtained a precise attitude determination after in-orbit calibration of the magnetometers. With this, we have now compiled a graphical demonstration of its movement during a pass over Wuerzburg. The video shows the satellite’s rotation in 8x time lapse, based on an attitude determination recording during which every 2 seconds the current estimated quaternions have been sampled. The satellite’s rotation is mainly about the Body Z axis, which is the axis in which the antennas are deployed and in which the main magnetic dipole is located. Visible is also minor jitter due to sensor noise inherent to the attitude determination process.
To watch to video please visit our News-Page: Attitude determination
Great Radio Amateur support
Since the very first operation of UWE-3 we received outstanding support from the radio amateurs around the world. PE0SAT received the first Beacon over Europe at 21.11.2013 / 9:19 UTC followed by DK3WN at 11:26 UTC. Here a complete list of “followers” of UWE-3 including the date and UTC of the first received beacon.
Since 21 November 2013 we received already more then 7.000 beacon. This diagram shows the number of packets received by the individual HAM:
Plotted over a world map you see the location of UWE-3 generated out of the received beacons (without beacons from the ground station of Wuerzburg):
In our last News we informed you about the new UWE-3 Online Telemetry Decoder from DK3WN (Thank you Mike!). The transmission to our server is much easier now because the valuable beacons from you are directly “injected” into our database. The following plot shows the great success of the new online decoder including the test phase beginning in the middle of April. All previous data has been submitted by e-mail or ftp-upload:
GREAT THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
Yours sincerely, UWE-3 Team
Thanks UWE-3 Team for keeping me/us informed and I am proud to be part of this experiment and group of enthusiasts. Lets hope that there will be a lot more opportunities to listen for that small cubesat.
Delfi-n3Xt: Request for help on S-band reception
Dear all,
It has been a while since you heard from us. We are still having problems to receive our satellite since our transponder test. We now want to try something different: trying to activate our S-band transmitter and let it transmit at full power for a pass. If we are able to receive a signal from the S-band, we know that Delfi-n3Xt still has an operational receiver and we could potentially demodulate the S-band signal. But since we already know that the latter is 
difficult, the first focus is just to “see” the signal. Since the satellite is still tumbling, it is a matter of link budget and statistics if we are able to catch the signal. To increase our chanceswe would like to ask the help of radio amateurs in the neighbourhood with suitable equipment. Since we have to actively command the satellite we have planned the passes which are suitable for the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Northern France and the availability of operators from our side. According to a quick survey, you are living in the area in reach at the selected passes.
The question to you:
Do you have S-band (2405 MHz) reception functionality with a dish of at least 2.5 meter and tracking capability and willing to follow and record one or more passes for us?
If so, please let us know your location, the gain of your antenna and the passes you are able to follow. Off course you do not have to be actively present during the pass. You can just record it and send the recording later through www.wetransfer.com.
Delfi-n3Xt will send at 2405 MHz +/- 100 kHz. The latter is the worst case uncertainty band, but I expect it to be pretty close to the right frequency. If you have an SDR, you can best set it at +/- 1 MHz around the centre frequency. Off course you do not have to be actively present during the pass. You can just record it
The planned attempts are stated by the LOCAL time of commanding below. If successful transmission would be within the 10-20 minutes after the indicated time.
If you are able, your help is highly appreciated!
Vy 73,
Jasper (PC4JB)
Listening this evening to FO-29 with my SDR receiver and saw a lot of FM Signals in the pass band. What a waste of space. Below an audio recording. I have no idea what language this is and where it is coming from.
This audio is just one of as you can see a lot of FM signals in the pass band. I guess this is also not healthy for the satellite.
Delfi-C³ (DO-64) Telemetry 03-05-2014 20:21 UTC
Delfi-C3 has celebrated its 6th birthday on the 28th of April. The spacecraft is still operational, telemetry only, on 145.870 USB.
Delfi-C3 has exceeded its mission lifetime by six times now, and on-board telemetry still does not indicate degradation in performance.
So far, our distributed ground station network (DGSN) has collected 2037513 frames as of today, received by 376 registered radio amateurs and many more on the guest account, using the free RASCAL software. This would not have been possible without your continued support.
Please note that the original team of students has long graduated, and delfi-c3 operations are done by very few volunteers. We continue to monitor the live telemetry in our spare time.
Wouter Weggelaar
PA3WEG
Delfi-C3 ops-team
KickSAT packet explained, the telemetry can be received at 437.505 MHz FM AX.25 1200 baud.
Telemetry packet example: P4C,783,0,0,0,
In the example above, the first three letter code (P4C) indicates that the satellite is in charging mode. The next number is the battery voltage in units of 1/100 volt, so 783 corresponds to a battery voltage of 7.83 volts. The next number (zero) is the number of main flight computer resets (in our case a Nexus S smartphone thanks to the PhoneSat team). The next number is the number of watchdog microcontroller resets. The last number (zero) is a status byte indicating if the ChipSats have been deployed yet.
These packets are being transmitted by the watchdog microcontroller every 150 seconds (2.5 minutes). When the main flight computer is on, the rate is once every 30 seconds and more data will be included in the packets.
[PE0SAT Wants to thank Zac Manchester for the above information]