SB NEWS @ AMSAT $SPC1209 * SpaceNews 09-Dec-96 * BID: $SPC1209 ========= SpaceNews ========= MONDAY DECEMBER 9, 1996 SpaceNews originates at KD2BD in Wall Township, New Jersey, USA. It is published every week and is made available for non-commercial use. * AMSAT-UK CALL FOR PAPERS * ============================ The 12th AMSAT-UK Colloquium will be held at Surrey University, Guildford, Surrey, U.K., from Friday 25th to Sunday 27th July 1997. Since the IARU will be at the Amsat-NA symposium, this year's event will comprise three days of technical matters only; there will be NO "political" subjects. AMSAT-UK invite authors to submit papers, about amateur radio space and associated activities, for this event; we normally prefer authors to present the papers themselves rather than having someone else read them in the authors' absence. This call will be repeated about March 1997. Abstracts of Papers for presentation should be submitted as soon as possible; the date for full submissions will be announced in the future bulletin. It is likely that the final date will be about one month prior to the event in order that the "Proceedings" document be available to participants. Submissions should be sent *ONLY* to G3RWL, via the following routes: Internet e-mail: g3rwl@amsat.org Packet Radio: G3RWL @ GB7HSN.#32.GBR.EU Terrestrial mail: R W L Limebear G3RWL 60 Willow Road Enfield EN1 3NQ United Kingdom. (No fax is available) AMSAT-UK also invites anyone with requests for Program Topics to submit them as soon as possible to G3RWL as above. Invitations for papers on specific subjects will be included in the future bulletin. Information about UoS Colloquium Web pages, will be included in the next bulletin. NOTE: SEND ALL OTHER INQUIRIES ABOUT COLLOQUIUM-97 TO THE AMSAT-UK OFFICE: AMSAT-UK LONDON E12 5EQ [Info via Richard W. L. Limebear, G3RWL] * MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR RELAY TEST NEWS * ======================================== The Mars Global Surveyor Relay test took place last two weekends ago and was a tremendous success. The MGS was at a distance of 5 million km from the earth, and for several hours sent a steady carrier of 1.3 watts at 437.1 MHz into a near isotropic antenna. Many amateurs around the world participated in trying to detect the signal. The AF9Y FFTDSP program was used successfully by many to detect the very weak signal. Some impressive results are shown on Mike's web page at http://www.webcom.com/af9y. At AA7FV, the approach was to try very high frequency resolution to pull the signal out of the noise, allowing for changing Doppler shift from the heliocentric orbital motion of the Mars Relay transmitter. Using a stable reference tone injected into the receiver passband to measure, and then compensate for, receiver phase and frequency drift, a resolution of 0.013 Hz was achieved. The signal width measured from the MR with this system was 0.0175 Hz, yielding a signal-to-noise ratio of 19 dB from a single 15-element Yagi. Some results of this experiment are summarized on: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/demerson/marsspec.htm. The Internet was used heavily during the test to communicate between participants, and for the control station at the Stanford dish to give frequent updates on the status of the MR. It was quite an exhilarating, but exhausting, event for all those who took part, with a lot of thanks owed to the JPL and Stanford folks who made it all possible. [Info via Darrel Emerson, AA7FV] * KO-23 NEWS * ============== Some users of the KITSAT-OSCAR-23 satellite have noticed a dramatic decrease in the amount of data successfully downloaded from the satellite per pass. The reason for this apparently has to do with a slight increase in FSK transmitter deviation caused by an elevated temperature within the satellite. The temperature rise is due to the fact that the satellite is currently in constant sunlight, and will remain so until 26-Dec-96. Groundstations with receiver I.F. bandwidths in excess of 15 kHz are not troubled with the slightly elevated FSK deviation. * MOON KEPLERIAN DATA * ======================= Those wishing Keplerian data elements for the moon are advised of the existence of a program called "moonkeps.zip" by HB9BNI that calculates and generates Keplerian data elements for the moon on a monthly basis. The program is available via the Internet using anonymous FTP at: ftp.funet.fi in the /pub/ham/satellite/tracking/ directory. [Info via Markku Korhonen, OH8UV] * 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/ PACKET : KD2BD @ KS4HR.NJ.USA.NA INTERNET : kd2bd@amsat.org, magliaco@email.njin.net SATELLITE : AMSAT-OSCAR-16, LUSAT-OSCAR-19 <<=- SpaceNews: The first amateur newsletter read in space! -=>> /EX