AMSAT General News

AMSAT Announces 50th Anniversary Space Symposium in Washington, DC

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The 2019 AMSAT 50th Anniversary Symposium will be held at The Hilton Arlington in Arlington, VA, in the Washington, DC Metro Area on October 18, 19, and 20, 2019.

The Hilton Arlington is located in the heart of the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington, VA. Connected to the Ballston Metro Station, the hotel offers easy and effortless access to Washington, DC’s top tourist destinations like the National Mall, Smithsonian museums and historic monuments. The hotel is six miles from Reagan National Airport and the National Mall.

The AMSAT Board of Directors Meeting will be held at the hotel on  October 16th and 17th. Tours of the Washington DC / Baltimore area will be held Sunday and Monday, October 20th and 21st. The banquet speakers will celebrate AMSAT’s long history, so please plan on attending the 50th Anniversary Symposium. You will be glad you did!

Keep checking ANS and the AMSAT Website for further updates and information, including hotel reservation details.

Es’hail-2/P4A Designated Qatar-OSCAR 100 (QO-100)

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On November 15, 2018, Es’hail-2/P4A was launched on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida. Es’hail-2/P4A was developed jointly by QARS (Qatar Amateur Radio Society) and Es’hailSat (the Qatar Satellite Company), with AMSAT-DL as the technical lead, and is the first geostationary amateur radio payload. The satellite has reached its final position at 25.9 °E, and the narrow and wideband transponders were successfully tested on December 23rd. The transponders are expected to be opened for general use in February 2019.

At the request of AMSAT Deutschland e.V., QARS, and Es’hailSat, AMSAT hereby designates Es’hail-2/P4A as Qatar-OSCAR 100 (QO-100). May the
100th OSCAR satellite be the guide star to future amateur radio satellites and payloads to geostationary orbit and beyond.

73,

Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA
AMSAT VP Operations / OSCAR Number Administrator

 

GOLF-TEE $15,000 Matching Funds President’s Challenge

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In October 2017 AMSAT announced the GOLF (Greater Orbit, Larger Footprint) program. The first project of the GOLF program is a technology demonstrator named GOLF-TEE (Technology Evaluation Environment). The design is a 3U CubeSat with deployable solar panels, ADAC (attitude determination and control), Software Defined Radio (SDR) Transponder, and a Vanderbilt University Low Energy Proton (LEP) experiment. Now is the time to begin work on the GOLF-TEE Project.

At the end of 2017, AMSAT has generous offers from two AMSAT Past Presidents for matching funds up to $15,000 for those that contribute to the GOLF-TEE campaign at https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=STK27W4G9RMLC between now and February 15th. Make your donation twice as valuable by taking advantage of this opportunity and contributing, and help AMSAT fund the launch of the next series of satellites of the GOLF program. There are also donate buttons for GOLF-TEE on the AMSAT website. Planning is for a launch in 2019.

Donations of $100 and $1,000 or more will be eligible for a special AMSAT GOLF premium. (Both premiums are currently being designed, so please be patient awaiting delivery.)

AMSAT is a 501-(c)-(3) not-for-profit educational and scientific organization of amateur radio operators whose purpose is to design, construct, launch, and operate satellites in space and to provide the support needed to encourage amateurs to utilize these resources. Please consider a tax-deductible contribution to AMSAT to help underwrite the development and launch expenses of our GOLF satellite program.

Donors wishing to provide additional matching funds please contact Joe Spier, K6WAO at [email protected].

AMSAT Vice-President Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, introducing GOLF at the 2017 AMSAT Space Symposium in Reno, NV.

AO-91 Commissioned, Declared Open for Amateur Use

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At 06:50 UTC on November 23, 2017, AMSAT Engineering officially commissioned AO-91 (RadFxSat/Fox-1B). AMSAT Vice-President Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, turned over operation to AMSAT Operations in a QSO on the AO-91 transponder with Mark Hammond, N8MH, of the AMSAT Operations team during the pass over the Eastern United States.

N8MH responded and declared AO-91 open for amateur use!

AO-91 was built as a partnership with Vanderbilt University ISDE and hosts four payloads for the study of radiation effects on commercial off the shelf components. The satellite was launched on November 18, 2017 as part of the ELaNa XIV mission, secondary payloads aboard the Delta II rocket that carried the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1) satellite to orbit. AO-91 also features the Fox-1 style FM U/v repeater with an uplink on 435.250 MHz (67.0 Hz CTCSS) and a downlink on 145.960 MHz. Satellite and experiment telemetry are downlinked via the “DUV” subaudible telemetry stream and can be decoded with the FoxTelem software.

Radio Programming Chart

AO-91 Doppler Shift Correction
Memory Your Transmit Frequency(With 67 Hz Tone) Your Receive Frequency
Acquisition of Signal (AOS) 435.240 MHz 145.960 MHz
Approaching 435.245 MHz 145.960 MHz
Time of Closest Approach (TCA) 435.250 MHz 145.960 MHz
Departing 435.255 MHz 145.960 MHz
Loss of Signal (LOS) 435.260 MHz 145.960 MHz