ARLS004 Three CubeSats with Amateur Radio Payloads Deployed from ISS

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has announced that three CubeSats carrying Amateur Radio payloads, including one with a V/U linear transponder, were deployed from the International Space Station (ISS) on May 11 at around 1030 UTC.

Irazu (Costa Rica) and 1KUNS-PF (Kenya) carry beacon/telemetry in the 70-centimeter Amateur Radio band, while UBAKUSAT (Turkey) carries an Amateur Radio linear transponder for SSB and CW, in addition to CW and telemetry beacons. Irazu is a 1U CubeSat developed by students at the Costa Rica Institute of Technology, with a telemetry beacon at 436.500 MHz. 1KUNS-PF is a 3U CubeSat developed by students at the University of Nairobi, with a telemetry beacon (9.6 kbps) at 437.300 MHz.

UBAKUSAT, a 3U CubeSat developed by students at the Istanbul Technical University, has a CW beacon at 437.225 MHz, and a telemetry beacon at 437.325 MHz. The linear transponder downlink is
435.200 - 435.250 MHz; the uplink is 145.940 - 145.990 MHz.

ARISS Equipment on SpaceX Launch

From AMSAT-bb and Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, ARISS International Chair, AMSAT-NA V.P. for Human Spaceflight Programs

Included as part of today's successful launch of the SpaceX Dragon vehicle to ISS is an ARISS Ericsson 2 meter VHF radio.  This radio will replace the Ericsson radio that failed a few months ago.  The VHF radio is used for school group contacts and amateur packet radio in the Columbus module.  Once the Dragon vehicle is berthed to ISS, the Ericsson will be unstowed and, at some point, installed in Columbus, replacing the UHF radio that is now supporting APRS packet and some school contacts.

Our thanks to SpaceX on an outstanding and historic flight from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A, where many Space Shuttle missions  and nearly all the Apollo moon missions were launched.  We also would like to thank our ARISS benefactors-NASA and CASIS, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space.  And, of course, our amateur radio long-time sponsors-our national amateur radio organizations around the world, including the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) in the US, and our international AMSAT organizations, including AMSAT-NA.

 Before closing, I want to let you know that ARISS is making great progress on the development of the new interoperable radio system that we hope to use to replace our aging radio infrastructure in the Columbus module and the Service module.  The hard (and expensive) part of this effort is just beginning, with testing and human certification on the horizon.  We thank all that have donated to the cause thus far.  We hope you continue to help ARISS move forward through your support, including your volunteer time and talent and, of course, financial contributions through the AMSAT web site
donate button.

Six Cubesats Successfully Launched on ISS

From JAXA Web and @JAXA twitter feed:

Six CubeSats were successfully deployed under command of the JAXA FCT on January 16. 154 CubeSats in total have been deployed from "Kibo."

Awaiting SpaceTrack.org to release kep elements for these six. I will have the Airspy up and running looking for signals.

CubeSats to Deploy from ISS 16 Jan 2017

ITF-2 CubeSat and Four Other Hamsats Set to Deploy from ISS

Toshihiro Kameda, JJ3GRX/W3GRX, of the University of Tsukuba's "Yui" satellite project in Japan, reports that the ITF-2 ("Imagine The Future") CubeSat is set for release from the International Space
Station (ISS) on Monday, January 16, at 0910 UTC.

The 1U ITF-2 was designed and built at the university. The Amateur Radio downlink is 437.525 MHz. Updated information will be announced on the AMSAT Bulletin Board at,
http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/amsat-bb/ .

ITF-2 is the successor to the unsuccessful ITF-1, which launched in 2014 but was never heard.

Six CubeSats delivered to ISS by HTV-6 will deploy from ISS with new JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) at 16h Jan. New J-SSOD has four satellite install cases. One satellite install case has 3U space, so new J-SSOD can deploy twelve CubeSat at one time. Six CubeSats are installed as follows,

satellite
install     CubeSats
case

   #1        three 1U CubeSats  ITF-2, WASEDA-SAT3, FREEDOM
   #2        one 3U CubeSat     EGG
   #3        one 2U CubeSat     AOBA-VELOX3
   #4        one 3U CubeSat     TuPOD (including Tancredo1 and OSNSAT)

ITF-2, WASEDA-SAT3, AOBA-VELOX3, TuPOD and Tancredo1 operate on the amateur radio bands.

#1 and #2 will be deployed at 0900-0930z 16th Jan, #3 and #4 will be 1030-1100z.

AOBA-Velox III (2U Cubesat)   437.375 1200bps AFSK CW

ITF-2 (Imagine The Future) (1U Cubesat)   437.525 1200bps FM CW



TuPOD (Tancredo 1 and OSNSAT)             437.425 1200bps GMSK CW
Tancredo-1 (3U Cubesat)                              437.200 1200bps AFSK

WASEDA-SAT3 (1U Cubesat)                    437.290  1200bps PCM-FSK CW

Live broadcast will start at 0850z on YouTube JAXA channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4xq_rj0QiQ

[ARRL and JAXA and N5FPW for the above information]

Two Radio Amateurs Set to Head for the International Space Station

Two Amateur Radio licensees are part of the International Space Station (ISS) crew increment bound for the orbiting outpost this week. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, KG5FYJ, astronaut Takuya Onishi,
KF5LKS, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin of Roscosmos will launch early on July 7 (0136 UTC) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio will spend approximately 4 months on station and will return to Earth in October.

An upgraded Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft will carry Rubins, Onishi, and Ivanishin into space. They will test modified systems for 2 days - 34 Earth orbits - before docking with the ISS on July 9. According
to NASA, the modified Soyuz is equipped with upgraded thrusters that are fully redundant, additional micrometeoroid debris shielding, redundant electrical motors for the Soyuz docking probe, and
increased power with more photovoltaic cells on the spacecraft's solar arrays. This week's launch will mark the first of at least two missions in which enhanced Soyuz hardware will be tested and verified.

Once the hatches between the Soyuz and the ISS have been opened, Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ, of NASA, and Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka, RN3FU, and Alexey vchinin of Roscosmos will greet their new crewmates.

The Expedition 48 crew members will continue experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science, and Earth science.

Rubins, Onishi, and cosmonaut Ivanishin will replace Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra, KE5UDN; Flight Engineer Tim Peake, KG5BVI/GB1SS, and Yuri Malenchenko, RK3DUP, who returned to Earth in mid-June after a little more than 6 months in space.

NASA TV will cover the launch and the arrival online at,
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public .

Trio of Radio Amateurs Returns to Earth from the ISS

Story courtesy of the ARRL website at http://www.arrl.org/news/trio-of-radio-amateurs-returns-to-earth-from-the-iss

 

The Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 47 crew members (NASA Photo)

Three radio amateurs who had been onboard the International Space Station (ISS) for a little more than 6 months landed safely back on Earth, touching down in Kazakhstan in a Soyuz transporter. Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra, KE5UDN; Flight Engineer Tim Peake, KG5BVI/GB1SS, and Yuri Malenchenko, RK3DUP, undocked from the space station early on July 18 (the evening of Friday, July 17, in US time zones) in a Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft commanded by Malenchenko, after spending 186 days in space since arriving at the ISS in December. Kopra now has 244 days in space on two flights, while Peake, on his first mission, spent 186 days. Wrapping up his sixth mission, Malenchenko now has logged 828 cumulative days in space, making him second on the all-time list behind Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, RN3DT.

 

As the Soyuz undocked from the station, ISS Expedition 48 officially began under the command of Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ. Williams and crewmates Oleg Skripochka, RN3FU, and Alexey Ovchinin will operate the station for 3 weeks until the arrival of the next crew increment. NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, KG5FYJ; Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, and Takuya Onishi, KF5LKS, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are set to launch on July 6 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

 

“The crew completed the in-flight portion of NASA human research studies in ocular health, cognition, salivary markers, and microbiome,” NASA said. “From the potential development of vaccines, to data that could be relevant in the treatment of patients suffering from ocular diseases, such as glaucoma, the research will help NASA prepare for human long-duration exploration while also benefiting people on Earth.”

 

The three crew members were on hand on the ISS for the April arrival of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), an expandable habitat technology demonstration. The BEAM was attached to the space station and expanded to its full size for analysis over the next 2 years.

 

While onboard the ISS, Kopra and Peake scored some milestones for the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program. On March 10, Kopra conducted the 1000th ARISS school group contact with students in North Dakota. Peake made use of Amateur Radio in his “Principia Mission” outreach, which aimed to directly engage students with communication technologies, inspiring them to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. During his time in space, Peake hosted 10 ARISS school group contacts, including the first to take advantage of the HamTV digital Amateur Radio television (DATV) system when he spoke with students on February 11 at a school in England. The DATV system in the Columbus module of the ISS allowed students at Royal Masonic School, home of GB1RSM, to see as well as listen, as Peake, operating as GB1SS, answered their questions about life in space.

 

SSTV from ISS on 145.800 MHz FM during July 15-16

ISS Amateur Radio Status: July 13, 2010

SpaceCam planed for July 15-16 By Miles Mann WF1F
MAREX-MG News www.marexmg.org
Manned Amateur Radio Experiment

Notes from the Ariss blog http://ariss-sstv.blogspot.com/

MAI-75 activation planned for July 15-16 (updated)

An activity to support SSTV activation (MAI-75) has been schedule on July 15 and 16. Times fall between 12:00-15:00 UTC on the 15th and 10:00-12:00 UTC on the 16th . The system will be operating space cam in slide show mode and is expected to use the Martin 1 format. The times are just over 1 orbit each day (two passes over Moscow) so opportunities will be very limited.

Tips for Working Slow Scan TV:

Will I be able to receive images from SpaceCam1?

Yes! SpaceCam1 will transmit and receive images on amateur radio frequencies, using standard SSTV formats. Although SpaceCam1 is capable of operating in several modes, the recommended format while in Slide Show mode is Robot 36. This format offers the best standard compromise between image quality and transmission time and heat stress.

In addition to two-way "interactive" operation, SpaceCam1 provides the following fully automatic functions:

-- Transmission from a live camera or disk at specified intervals
-- “Slide Show" operation from a set of images stored on the system
-- SSTV Repeater

What equipment will I need to receive the images?

Radio receiver with an outdoor antenna. The radio receive will need to be able to receive FM signals on 145.800 MHz radio band. A PC with SSTV software or a dedicated SSTV scan converter.

For information on how to receive SSTV images from the International Space station, check out the MAREX link: http://www.marexmg.org/fileshtml/howtouseiss.html

Over the next few weeks we maybe receiving images from the International Space station via Slow Scan TV (SSTV). The MAREX team will be collecting these images from the amateur Radio and SWL community and we will post the best.

We would like to collect all images received. However in order to properly catalog the images we request you use the following image naming format. After you receive you images; please rename the images using the following format, All Lower case letters

Year 06, Month 07, Day 31, (UTC time), Call sign, Short text description, .JPG

Example:

New format: 0607311905wf1f.jpg

I removed the first two numbers of the year and the “Z” for UTC time. All dates are assumed to be in UTC dates. The images coming down from ISS will also have a time stamp embedded into the image. You can also use these numbers to generate you file names. If you are a Short Wave listener and do not have a call sign, just place your Initials after the time (0607311905abc.jpg)

If we break this down
Year =06
Month = 07
Day = 31
Time = 1905 UTC
Call sign = wf1f
Description (optional) = Windows shot
Image format = jpg

Image Quality
Please do not put any text over lays on the images, Example, do not put web page or advertisements in the image. Your own call sign and date are acceptable.

Send all images directly to MAREX at Marexmg@comcast.net

We would also like to know the following information in your email.

Name or Call sign
Country / State
Receiver
Software decoding tool
Elevation or range of ISS when you decoded the image.

Slide Show Mode:
The MAREX SpaceCam1 software contains a feature called “Slide Show” mode. It allows the crew to preload a directory full of images that will be automatically transmitted to Earth. The crew will not need to keep pushing a button to send images. In theory the system can run for weeks at a time without crew involvement. The SpaceCam project will be able to transmit over 200 SSTV images per day (Robot 36 format).

Ariss has not announced any plans for a SSTV Uplink frequency.

SSTV Decoding Software http://www.barberdsp.com/

There are many choices in SSTV software, some Free, others with more features cost a few bucks. http://www.marexmg.org/fileshtml/sstvlinkpage.html

So have fun, find your best setup and start practicing (on Earth) how to decode SSTV on 2-meters.

Marexmg Web page
http://www.marexmg.org/

ARISS Web page and other great Space projects
http://www.rac.ca/ariss/

73 Miles WF1F MAREX-MG

Space Station Marathon

If you've never seen a spaceship with your own eyes, now's your chance.

The International Space Station (ISS) is about to make a remarkable series of flybys over the United States. Beginning this 4th of July weekend, the station will appear once, twice, and sometimes three times a day for many days in a row. No matter where you live, you should have at least a few opportunities to see the biggest spaceship ever built.

Check NASA's ISS Tracker for flyby times at your location.

The ISS has been under construction for nearly 11 years, and it has grown very large and very bright. The station is now more than 350 ft wide (wider than a football field), has 12,600 cubic feet of labs and living quarters, and on Earth would weigh about 670,000 lb. Sunlight illuminating the massive outpost makes it shine fifteen times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.

Sometimes it is even brighter than that. Sunlight glinting from the station's flat surfaces (mainly solar arrays) produce dazzling flares as much as six hundred times brighter than Sirius. For astronomers: On the scale of visual magnitudes, space station flares register -8.

"The station flared spectacularly on May 22nd when it passed over my backyard observatory in the Netherlands," reports amateur astronomer Quintus Oostendorp. "I knew the ISS was coming, so I had my telescope ready and I was able see exactly what happened."

At present, the flares are unpredictable. No one knows when they will happen or exactly how bright they will be. Any given flyby could be interrupted by one — and that's what makes the watch so much fun.

The marathon of space station flybys won't stop until mid-to-late July (depending on your location). That gives space shuttle Endeavour, currently scheduled to launch on July 11th, time to reach the space station and join the show. As the shuttle approaches station for docking, many observers will witness a memorable double flyby — Endeavour and the ISS sailing side by side across the starry night sky.

Endeavour is on yet another space station construction mission. This time it will deliver a "space porch" to be added to Japan's Kibo science laboratory module. The porch is not a place where astronauts can sit, relax and watch the stars drift by (although that is not a bad idea); it is a science platform. When an experiment needs to be exposed to the hard vacuum or energetic radiation of space, it can placed outside on the porch to take advantage of the space station's unique research environment. The official name of the porch is the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility and it will add its own small contribution to the station's reflected luminosity in the night sky.

What now? Check for flyby times, ready your telescope (optional), and let the sightings begin.

Both of my binoculars are at the ready and I look forward to catching the ISS crossing our mountain skies.

For my local office here is a list of ISS passes over southwest North Carolina (obs based on a Murphy NC viewing site).

SATELLITE LOCAL DURATION MAX ELEV APPROACH DEPARTURE
DATE/TIME (MIN) (DEG) (DEG-DIR) (DEG-DIR)

ISS Sun Jul 05/05:53 AM 2 24 10 above NNW 24 above NNE
ISS Mon Jul 06/10:41 PM 6 54 10 above WSW 10 above NE
ISS Tue Jul 07/05:07 AM 5 26 10 above NNW 11 above E
ISS Tue Jul 07/09:31 PM 5 33 11 above SSW 11 above ENE
ISS Tue Jul 07/11:07 PM 4 17 10 above WNW 10 above NNE
ISS Wed Jul 08/05:31 AM 5 74 10 above NW 12 above SE
ISS Wed Jul 08/09:55 PM 5 50 10 above WSW 12 above NE
ISS Thu Jul 09/04:21 AM 5 28 10 above NNW 10 above E
ISS Thu Jul 09/05:56 AM 4 16 10 above W 10 above S
ISS Thu Jul 09/10:23 PM 1 15 15 above NNW 11 above N
ISS Fri Jul 10/04:49 AM 1 30 30 above SSE 12 above SE
ISS Sat Jul 11/09:38 PM 1 14 14 above NNW 10 above N

Tracking Resources
NASA http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/
Heaven's Above http://heavens-above.com/
Simple Flybys http://spaceweather.com/flybys

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips Credit: Science@NASA

International Space Station conducts tests for Air Force

by Pete Meltzer Jr. Materials and Manufacturing Directorate

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFPN) -- Air Force Research Laboratory officials here recently partnered with NASA to conduct materials experiments aboard the International Space Station.

The project incorporates 500 materials samples into two suitcase-like containers attached to the exterior of the International Space Station.

The containers are fully opened and folded back to expose them to atomic oxygen bombardment, solar radiation, extreme temperature changes, and other severe space environmental factors. They will remain in that configuration until retrieved by International Space Station astronauts and brought back to Earth aboard a space shuttle.

Members of the Laboratory's Materials and Manufacturing and Propulsion directorates, working with NASA, the U.S. Air Force Academy, Sandia National Laboratories, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Boeing, the Space Test Program, Aerospace Corp., deployed the sixth in a series of materials experiments to the International Space Station via a space shuttle.

The International Space Station provides a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate and qualify promising new materials that may offer weight, performance and cost savings benefits, and to re-qualify existing materials, said Shane Juhl, an engineer at AFRL and current program manager for the Materials on the International Space Station Experiment program, known as MISSE.

"Due to the limited number of qualified materials for space, manufacturers tend to build spacecraft using existing qualified materials," Mr. Juhl said. "MISSE offers a cost-effective means for testing new materials and requalifying existing ones whose suppliers or processing methods have undergone change over time.

"No single piece of equipment or facility currently exists that can simultaneously expose materials to all the damaging environmental effects of space," Mr. Juhl said. "In the laboratory, samples can be exposed to only a limited number of simulated environments at a time. In space -- the ultimate testing environment -- samples are exposed to all the harsh realities of the space environment at once."

Until now, the AFRL Materials and Manufacturing Directorate staff has deployed only passive experiments to the International Space Station (experiments characterized before and after deployment). The ongoing mission, MISSE 6, incorporates eight active AFRL experiments that collect and store data in real time continuously or at set intervals for later analysis.

"The transition to more active experimentation will provide unprecedented information about the on-orbit effects on material properties of interest and will help reduce material screening and qualification costs," Mr. Juhl said. "This will free up more funding for mission-critical programs."

MISSE 6 is comprised of two containers and incorporates 40 samples from AFRL including the eight active experiments. Officials say a seventh deployment is in the planning phase.