FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Number 94-06 November 1, 1994 PHASE 3-D INTERNATIONAL SATELLITE TEAM MEETS IN GERMANY TO REVIEW ONGOING PROGRESS Members of the Phase 3-D International Satellite Design Team met in Marburg, Germany October 12th to 23rd, 1994. Dr. Karl Meinzer, DJ4ZC, AMSAT-DL President and the Phase 3-D Project Team Leader, and Werner Haas, DJ5KQ, AMSAT-DL Vice President, hosted the series of detailed meetings which included a "top-to-bottom" review of progress on all the satellite's systems and sub-systems. During the discussions, team members also bench- tested a number of flight hardware electronic items, and set the final operating frequencies for the spacecraft's transmitters and receivers. "It was a marathon session," said Dick Jansson, WD4FAB, AMSAT North America's Vice President for Engineering, upon his return to the United States on October 24th from the Marburg meetings. Dick went on to note that, as a result of the session, team members are now very confident that all key elements of the project are on schedule and that the spacecraft's integration in Florida can continue without interruption. Several critical schedule milestones were achieved during the meetings. Among them were completion of all the formal documentation accompanying AMSAT's "Application to Use Ariane" (DUA) along with the necessary Safety Submission. Together, these documents constitute the formal, written request to The European Space Agency (ESA) regarding how AMSAT proposes to safely mount Phase 3-D on the Ariane 5. It took several members a number of days to complete this highly complex task. In addition, an ESA representative visited with the team in Marburg during the session to discuss details of Phase 3-D's interface to the Ariane 5. Another series of meetings involved Dr. Andras ("Bandi") Gschwindt, HA5WH, and two of his colleagues, all from the University of Budapest. These meetings finalized the P3-D power system's architecture and the design of the Battery Charge Regulator (BCR). Bandi has been involved with the BCRs on all previous Phase 3 spacecraft. Also present at the session was Freddy de Guchteneire, ON6UG, Phase 3-D's Frequency Coordinator. Under Freddy's expert guidance, the team finalized all of Phase 3-D's frequency passbands. This all-important step cast the frequencies in "quartz" for the spacecraft's RF units. Freddy will make a separate public announcement in the near future listing Phase 3-D's final frequency passbands in more detail. In addition, Freddy, Dr. Karl Meinzer and Werner Haas spent a considerable amount of time bench-testing the nearly completed flight models of the V and U band receivers. Karl also met with Michael Scharfe, DH7UX, and Ralf Zimmermann, DL7FDT, both of the University of Darmstadt, regarding the details of the spacecraft's reaction wheel stabilization system. During these meetings, the overall design approach for the reaction wheel system was finalized and Michael and Ralf are now in the process of turning Karl's fundamental mechanical, magnetic and mathematical design concepts into actual flight hardware for the spacecraft. Another key element of this critical process involved a series of meetings among Karl, Dick Jansson and Wilfred Gladish. During these meetings, the team modified and finalized both the location and design for the reaction wheel mounting hardware. On October 19th, Peter Guelzow, DB2OS, joined the session and directed several key discussions regarding the status and availability of the remaining spacecraft modules. After extensive discussions with the RUDAK group in Munich, the team concluded that the RUDAK-E experiment would not be available and, therefore, will not fly. However, good construction progress on the RUDAK-U, the user-oriented digital communications system, as well as its special relationship to other onboard high-speed data experiments, such as the SCOPE cameras and GPS experiment, were noted. Peter and Werner also held some very detailed side meetings that finalized the specific architecture for the RUDAK-U. Matjaz Vidmar, YT3MV, arrived on Friday, the 21st of October to discuss various design aspects of the receivers he is building for Phase 3-D. Other discussions noted favorable progress now being made on Phase 3-D's IF matrix as well as the LEILA system. In a related development, Peter agreed to oversee construction of all of Phase 3-D's CheckOut Test Equipment (COTE). This equipment will be a critical hardware and software suite providing remote command and control of the spacecraft during integration, checkout and launch. Finally, the team conducted a detailed "top-to-bottom" schedule review of the project. All agreed that the schedule timing is "tight". However, in closing, Dr. Meinzer expressed his satisfaction with the progress to date, and expressed confidence that the time allotted for all remaining critical activities in the project schedule appeared both realistic and achievable. {Our thanks to Dick Jansson, WD4FAB, and Peter Guelzow, DB2OS, who contributed the information that went into this News Release} For more information contact: Keith C. Baker, KB1SF 1324 Fairgrounds Road Xenia, Ohio 45385-9514 USA "kb1sf@amsat.org"