SB NEWS @ AMSAT $SPC1016 * SpaceNews 16-Oct-95 * BID: $SPC1016 ========= SpaceNews ========= MONDAY OCTOBER 16, 1995 SpaceNews originates at KD2BD in Wall Township, New Jersey, USA. It is published every week and is made available for unlimited free distribution. * EUROMIR 95 & SCHOOL CONTACTS * ================================ Up to now, 23 requests from school stations have been received to organize scheduled Amateur Radio contacts with DP0MIR / R0MIR. The list of stations requesting schedules includes: DL0FHK, DF0GE, DF0IG, DF0WT, DL0KGN, DL0FKG, DL0RSW, DL0BSR, DL0MR, DF0GSL, DK0IG, DB0KGI, DB0FRI, DL0WQ, DK0XR, DF0CGD, DL0ETA, DF0HH, DB0GX, D? (1 stn from Seelow), GI7DAW, and F5KEN. Only one school station, DL0ERS, from Eislingen, Germany, has had a chance to work DP0MIR on 21-Sep-95. The next round of school contacts are planned for November when passes over Europe will be more suitable. [Info via Thomas, DL2MDE, and Joerg, DL3LUM] * OSCAR-11 NEWS * ================= Beacon transmissions on 145.826 MHz continue. There have been some breaks in service that have been due to a "watchdog" timer prematurely timing out. The purpose of this timer is to turn off all beacon transmitters after 12 days if no groundstation commands have been received by the satellite. This allows the command receivers to operate at maximum sensitivity without blocking from the satellite's beacon transmitters. Followers of OSCAR-11 will remenber that receiver blocking caused control to be lost for several months during the early stage of the satellite's mission. Richard, G3RWL, has continued to provide regular weekly news bulletins that are uploaded weekly, usually on Friday afternoon or during the weekend. Schools and colleges are invited to describe their satellite experiments in the news bulletin carried on OSCAR-11. Copy for the bulletin should be sent to Richard on floppy disk or by packet radio. OSCAR-11's operations follow a 10-minute schedule that is under control of a "Diary" that is written in Forth. The schedule is as follows: Binary Telemetry : 90 seconds Binary WOD : 120 seconds ASCII Bulletin : 60 seconds SEU Dump : 30 seconds ASCII Telemetry : 90 seconds ASCII WOD : 120 seconds ASCII Bulletin : 60 seconds Engineering Blks : 30 seconds The channels surveyed in the Whole Orbit Dump (WOD) are listed during the transmission of the satellite On-Board Computer (OBC) status report. Single Event Upset (SEU) counts are showing a memory location failure at 37B1 hex. As a result, the count is incremented every wash cycle (approximately every 7 minutes, or 198 counts per day). This obscures the normal and less frequent SEUs. When the counter reached 32767 it overflowed to -32767 and counted up towards 0. It has since passed through 0 and is increasing beyond 10000. The ASCII Telemetry Transmissions contain errors in the time and date stamp. The date is advanced by one day, and the time is advanced by approximately 7.5 minutes. The time and date are correct during the transmission of the Binary Engineering Blocks. These blocks repeat information in the ASCII Status Blocks. The ASCII Status Blocks contain the correct date and time. Good data is being obtained from the ASCII Whole Orbit Data (WOD) transmissions. This data shows little modulation of the Z-axis field, which is due to the rotation of the spacecraft. This indicates that the attitude control continues to keep the satellite's Z-axis earth pointing (i.e. pointing in the general direction of the earth's magnetic field). OSCAR-11 has recently encountered solar eclipses, but the satellite is now under continuous sunlight. [Info via OSCAR NEWS numbers 111 and 115] * DP0MIR EXPECTED ON 70 CM * ============================ German Cosmonaut Thomas Reiter DF4TR / DP0MIR has installed the duoband transceiver in the MIR spacecraft. Anyone hearing him on 70 cm is asked to send signal reports to DF0VR at any of the following addresses: Packet: DF0VR@DB0AAB.#BAY.DEU.EU or E-Mail: hams.df0vr@dlr.de Remember: Uplink Downlink Main 70 cm frequencies are: 435.725 MHz 437.925 MHz (Voice) 435.775 MHz 437.975 MHz (Packet) 2 meter frequencies are: 145.200 MHz 145.800 MHz (as per IARU) 145.550 MHz There has been no 9600 baud packet radio activity yet since the high speed TNC will not arrive at MIR space station until the end of the year. ESA plans to extend the EUROMIR 95 mission an additional 40 days. [Info via Norbert, DF5DP, DARC Coordinator Satellites and Space Projects] * FEEDBACK/INPUT WELCOMED * =========================== Comments and input for SpaceNews should be directed to the editor (John, KD2BD) via any of the paths listed below: FAX : 1-908-747-7107 FTP : pilot.njin.net cd to /pub/SpaceNews WWW : http://www.njin.net:80/~magliaco/ PACKET : KD2BD @ KS4HR.NJ.USA.NA INTERNET : magliaco@pilot.njin.net SATELLITE : AMSAT-OSCAR-16, LUSAT-OSCAR-19 MAIL : John A. Magliacane, KD2BD Department of Engineering and Technology Advanced Technology Center Brookdale Community College Lincroft, New Jersey 07738 U.S.A. <<=- SpaceNews: The first amateur newsletter read in space! -=>> /EX