SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-285.01 AO-40 Update AMSAT News Service Bulletin 285.01 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. October 12, 2003 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-285.01 Due to the worsening solar angle we have begun off-pointing ALON at the rate of about 1 deg/day. ALON/ALAT was ~ 18 / 0 on 11/12 Oct 2003. ALON will be slowly advancing to 45. Watch the telemetry beacon's N-block for updates. Due to the changing attitude, the schedule has been adjusted with transponder operations moving later in the orbit. The new schedule is shown below. N QST AMSAT AO-40 SCHEDULE 2003-10-09 MA 002 060 174 176 184 230 244 002 ---------7-----1-----3-----6-----4-----5-----0-----7 S2/K-Tx | S | S | S/K | S/K | S | S | S | MB | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | RUDAK | | | | | | | | V/U-Rx | U | U | U | U | U | U | V | Uplink | | UL1 | | UL | UL | | | The AO-40 team would like your telemetry files! Please "zip" compress your daily telemetry files and e-mail to: ao40-archive@amsat.org [ANS thanks Stacey, W4SM, for the above information] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-285.02 YACER software update AMSAT News Service Bulletin 285.02 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. October 12, 2003 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-285.02 Those interested in following the ALAT and ALON of AO-40 from the shack: Paul, KB5MU, has just posted the latest version of YACER on the AMSAT.org web site. "YACER", Yet Another Camera Experiment - Revisited, is a suite of the programs that the Ground Controllers use to determine the current ALAT and ALON of our spacecraft by using pictures taken with the YACE camera. While not for the faint of heart, it is truly a fun project, especially at this time of year when there is plenty of spacecraft re-orientation. The latest version, V1.05, is the same as prior versions with the exception of a bug-fix to the program ConvKeps. If you presently have YACER you can go to the AMSAT site and download ONLY the new ConvKeps V1.5e program. Present users should probably just take the new program, not the complete suite, since the suite is an auto executable file that will re-establish the complete file structure. You will risk overwriting files that you have created earlier. The same package and stand alone program, in German documentation, will soon be available on AMSAT-DL. [ANS thanks Gunther, W8GSM, for the above information] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-285.03 HAMSAT launch delayed AMSAT News Service Bulletin 285.03 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. October 12, 2003 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-285.03 HAMSAT also known as VUSat, which was to be a co-passenger of a remote sensing satellite onboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from Sriharikota launch range later this month, will not make the trip. An official release from ISRO said that the Hamsat was to be launched as an auxiliary payload using the launch capacity of PSLV. Unfortunately, during the thermovacuum test of Hamsat, deviations in the performance of the Ham payload were observed. After the required corrections have been made, Hamsat will be accommodated on one of the subsequent flights of PSLV. Updated information is available from the web sites www.amsatindia.org and www.amsat-india.org [ANS thanks AMSAT-INDIA for the above information] /EX SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-285.04 This Week's News in Brief AMSAT News Service Bulletin 285.04 From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD. October 12, 2003 To All RADIO AMATEURS BID: $ANS-285.04 ** A Chinese space official confirms today that the launch date of Shenzhou-5 (SZ-5) has been set for this week, and there will be live TV coverage for the entire population in China, and perhaps worldwide broadcasting. A message posted on an online aerospace forum said that according to unconfirmed information from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre (JSLC) where SZ-5 would blast off, a favored launch date could be Oct. 16, weather permitting. --SpaceDaily ** A team of astrophysicists have taken a kick at the conventional view that the Universe is flat and endless, suggesting instead that the cosmos is shaped like... a football. The notion of a Universe made of curved pentagon-shaped panels is derived from a satellite mapping of the radiation that was released by the Big Bang billions of years ago and which still washes through space in the form of microwave energy. They suggest that only a "dodecahedral" -- the posh word for a soccer-ball shape -- could contain this kind of energy release. --SpaceDaily ** The Heinlein Prize, a major new award for practical accomplishments in commercial space activities, was announced today at the 54th International Aeronautical Congress underway in Bremen, Germany. Trustees of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust revealed that the first Heinlein Prize award has been set at $500,000 USD. The Heinlein Prize may be given as frequently as annually to one or more individuals who have achieved practical accomplishments in the field of commercial space activities. The Trustees emphasize that the award is for effort by an individual - not corporate or government sponsored activities - and that the Heinlein Prize is intended to be world-wide in scope. --SpaceDaily /EX