The Apogee View

President's Message

As published in the July/August AMSAT Journal

AMSAT’s Eagle Project- Part 2

In the last issue of the Journal I described the evolution of AMSAT’s Eagle project. The primary goal of Eagle is to put a communications payload into high Earth orbit. This project has seen various important changes over time based on the evolution of our understanding of orbital dynamics, our desire to reach out to a wider audience with new technology, launch costs, and new launch opportunities.

Unfortunately, AMSAT has experienced difficulty managing these changes. There are various reasons for this including conflicting views of the end goal with the AMSAT Board and officers, the introduction of new volunteers with strong views of their own, inadequate communication with the existing users of Ham satellites only some of whom are AMSAT members, and inadequate leadership by your president and his executive team. The most visible result of these problems was a “meltdown” of the engineering department in June and July of this year. I take full responsibility for these failures and I apologize to the AMSAT membership for them.

I think, however, there is a silver lining in all of this. The opportunity to launch an AMSAT “rideshare” payload attached to a large commercial satellite still exists. The fundamental design decisions made for the Eagle mission payload in 2004 are still valid for this geosynchronous HEO mission. In my opinion this leaves us with three main concerns. First, we must fit the mission limitations provided to us by the commercial satellite designers, especially as regards the available space and location of that space on their satellite. Second, we must minimize the parameters that would affect cost, particularly mass, and antenna size. Third, we will need outside funding to make up the bulk of the launch costs so a mission must be planned that meets the needs of such funding sources as well as our own.

It is this last point that has created controversy in recent months. AMSAT’s Board and other interested AMSAT members have renewed the discussion about what mission parameters are important to assure adequate funding for Eagle’s launch while simultaneously meeting the needs and desires of our members. There is another group I have been trying to consider in this discussion which is the hundreds of thousands of other Hams who should be operating satellites but don’t for a variety of reasons. I have long believed that the Advanced Communications Payload (ACP) would make Ham satellite communication available to this group.

Unfortunately, the combination of the engineering department’s meltdown, my inability to devote full-time effort to AMSAT and differences with the Board over priorities has led me to the conclusion that I must step aside and give someone else the opportunity to move AMSAT forward. Thus, this will be my last Apogee View as I will not offer my name for the position of president at the next Board meeting in October. I am taking this action in what I believe to be the best interests of AMSAT and you, the members. I will continue to serve on the Board and I will devote my newly found free time to engineering activities that I hope will be of benefit to AMSAT in the future, especially on the SuitSat and Eagle projects.

Thank you all for your support. It has been my honor to serve you for the past four years.

Remember that you can contact your AMSAT Board members and officers through the links on the AMSAT Web page (www.amsat.org, go to “About AMSAT” then “Our Leadership Team”).

73,
Richard M. Hambly, W2GPS
AMSAT President

Updated: 23 Sep, 08