SB NEWS @ AMSAT $SPC0403 * SpaceNews 03-Apr-00 * BID: $SPC0403 ========= SpaceNews ========= MONDAY APRIL 3, 2000 * NEW PACSAT/APRS SOFTWARE * ============================ Doug, KA2UPW has completed his Pacsat Sound Card uplink software that can uplink Manchester encoded 1200 baud packet data to the AO16, LO19 and IO26 packet digipeaters. He has placed UPW version 1.05 on the web. UPW is the soundcard digital signal processing program that allows anyone with a computer, soundcard, and 2-meter FM transmitter to uplink APRS style status/positions/messages to the 1200 baud Pacsats. The zipped executable is available at: http://members.aol.com/dquagliana/upw/upw105.zip The documentation is available at: http://members.aol.com/dquagliana/upw/index.html [Info via Doug, KA2UPW, and Bob, WB4APR] * STS-101 NEWS * ================ The upcoming space shuttle mission to the International Space Station will be delayed to give the commander of the shuttle Atlantis more time to train after an ankle injury. NASA officials reported that the Atlantis ISS mission has been rescheduled to April 24, 2000. The flight had been targeted for April 18th. The commander, Air Force Colonel James Halsell, recently injured his left ankle during training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "He needs time to complete his training activities,'' NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham said. Buckingham also said some of the other Atlantis crewmembers joined the team "fairly late'' but that their training has now been completed. The late-arriving crew joined the Atlantis team after the decision was made to split the April mission into two flights because of Russian delays in completing the Zvezda service module. A second Atlantis flight is planned for mid-August after the scheduled July launch of the Russian module, which is to supply early living quarters and propulsion. Only after ISS living quarters are established will Amateur Radio operation begin from the orbiter. The April 24th mission from the Kennedy Space Center will be a nine day, 19-hour mission to service the two connected pieces of the station that now are in orbit. The mission also will include a spacewalk. The flight is one of at least 40 flights and 1,700 space walks planned during the next five years to the space station. [Info via the AMSAT-NA News Service] * NEW VERSIONS OF PREDICT RELEASED * ==================================== New DOS and Linux versions of KD2BD's satellite tracking and orbital prediction software PREDICT were recently released. PREDICT is free software and is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The new release adds the following features over earlier versions: * A solar illumination feature was added to predict the percentage of time a satellite spends in sunlight per day. * Orbital predictions for satellites that appear to have decayed since the last Keplerian orbital update are no longer attempted by the program. * Date and time used to start orbital predictions may now be abbreviated to Day/Month/Year only (00:00:00 is assumed). * System clock/calendar is now read to millisecond precision, permitting more "lively" real-time tracking mode displays. * The command-line parsing code was modified to prevent segmentation faults from occurring if command-line options are incorrectly issued. * Some minor coding changes were made. The new Linux version also includes the following changes: * "vocalizer" code was changed to use a slightly different (better) approach towards initializing and sending data to the system soundcard. * Socket-based server code was contributed by Ivan Galysh, KD4HBO. It allows PREDICT to export real-time tracking data for all 24 satellites to external client programs, such as automatic antenna rotator controllers, graphical map display programs, or TX/RX tuning controllers. The server features are activated by invoking PREDICT with a -s switch. Communication between server and clients is by way of the UDP protocol. Real-time data is exported by PREDICT in both the single satellite and multi-satellite tracking modes. Sample code is included with the program to aid in developing client applications. Full source code is included in both the DOS and Linux versions. Further information is available at: http://www.linuxfan.com/~predict PREDICT for Linux may be downloaded from: ftp://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/software/Linux/predict-2.1.1.tar.gz PREDICT for DOS may be downloaded from: ftp://ftp.amsat.org/amsat/sofware/PC/tracking/predict2.0.2d.zip * FEEDBACK/INPUT WELCOMED * =========================== Comments and input for SpaceNews should be directed to the editor (John, KD2BD) via any of the paths listed below: WWW: http://www.njin.net/~magliaco/ MAIL: John A. Magliacane, KD2BD Department of Engineering and Technology Brookdale Community College 765 Newman Springs Road Lincroft, New Jersey 07738 U.S.A. PACKET: KD2BD @ N2TDU.NJ.USA.NA INTERNET: kd2bd@amsat.org, magliaco@email.njin.net SATELLITE: AMSAT-OSCAR-16, KITSAT-OSCAR-25 <<=- SpaceNews: The first amateur newsletter read in space! -=>> <<=- Serving the planet (and beyond) since 1987 -=>> /EX