| October, 2007 |  |
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Satellite Shorts from All Over [AMSAT]
- Satellite operators can find the latest information about New Zealand’s KiwiSAT at http://www.kiwisat.org which is updated weekly. Terry, ZL3QL wrote, “The project is well down the track to completion and this page will give a good idea of what is still required.” He invited amateurs to check out and respond to http://www.kiwisat.org.nz/funding.html.
- Matthias, DD1US invites satellite operators to visit his “Sounds from Space” site at http://www.dd1us.de. He has posted a collection of recordings from various space objects. Most of them are ham radio satellites and space ships.
- NASA’s two venerable Voyager spacecraft are celebrating three decades of flight as they head toward interstellar space. Their ongoing odysseys mark an unprecedented and historic accomplishment. Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977. They continue to return information from distances more than three times farther away than Pluto.
- Zarya, the International Space Station’s first component to go into space, passed the 50,000th orbit mark this week on August 14. Zarya, which is Russian for “Sunrise”, was funded by the United States and built by Russia. It launched atop a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 20, 1998.
- An interactive guide to the International Space Station can be found on-line at: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/ISSRG/index.htm.
- Google Earth software has now added the capability to view images of the sky. Using the new “Sky in Google Earth” feature you can zoom in Hubble images. Version 4.2 of the software at http://earth.google.com/ contains the additional sky watching features.
- While not quite amateur radio related, many hams enjoy learning about scientific work in other fields. The events taking place today at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland by one of the world’s largest assembled teams of scientists attempting to discover what is considered the “Holy Grail” of particle physics, the Higgs Boson, and recreate the conditions that existed a few seconds after the Big Bang are highlighted in an interesting on-line BBC video at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6454521153918323669
- Eric, W4OTN, AMSAT Area Coordinator for Southeastern Virginia is proposing creating a Satellite Islands on the Air (IOTA) award. He is currently in the process of collecting comments to support his request to the IOTA Board. If you are interested in supporting this new award please submit your comments to Eric via:
http://eric-sparks.blogspot.com/2007/08/official-iota-satellite-award-petition.html - Ed, WA4SWJ Editor of The AMSAT Journal reported this week that the July/August issue of the Journal was uploaded to the printer on August 28. This issue should be on its way to your mailbox shortly.
- Information about an ESA student project with a 30 kilometre tether which will perform a deorbit manoeuvre of a capsule is now availableon-line at http://www.yes2.info/. This is scheduled to fly in late September. The tether is expected to be visible over parts of Africa the Middle East, South America (below 55°S), Antarctic Peninsula (above 82°S), and Eastern Russia and western Alaska (above 170°E).
- The Smallsat conference held in August published the abstracts from the papers presented including one by Kyle Leveque KG6TXT`on GENSO - the Global Educational Network for Satellite Operators. He will be presenting a further update on this network at the AMSAT Symposium in October. See http://www.smallsat.org/tech-sessions for more information.
- The presentation slides from the CalPoly Summer Workshop are available at http://cubesat.atl.calpoly.edu/pages/workshops/2007-summer-workshop.php. Included is an update on the Delfi-C3 sunlight only U/V transponder mission due for launch from India later this year.
ARISS Video to be Presented at AMSAT Symposium
The Orlando, Florida Area Coordinator for AMSAT is currently working on a presentation to be given at the 2007 Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT) Space Symposium which will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 26- 28. The presentation will include video from the July 17 ARISS contact with the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.
| October, 2007 | |
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