FOX Satellite News

Fox-1 Z Axis Solar Panels Approved

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The AMSAT Fox engineering team has completed the design of the printed circuit boards for the satellite's "Z" solar panels. Each of these printed circuit boards (PCBs) will accommodate two Boeing/Spectrolab UTJ solar cells. There is a hole in the panel for the lens of the Camera module that is being developed by Virginia Tech. A sample PCB was fabricated and sent to our partner SpaceQuest who approved it for manufacturing into our solar panels.

The AMSAT Fox engineering team has completed the design of the printed circuit boards for the satellite’s “Z” axis solar panels. Each of these printed circuit boards (PCBs) will accommodate two Boeing/Spectrolab UTJ solar cells.There is a hole in the panel for the lens of the Camera module that is being developed by Virginia Tech. A sample PCB was fabricated and sent to our partner SpaceQuest who approved it for manufacturing into our solar panels.

[ANS thanks Tony Monteiro, AA2TX, VP for Engineering for the above information]

Fox-1 main computer engineering prototype comes alive

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The Fox-1 development team is pleased to report that the first engineering model of the satellite’s Integrated Housekeeping Unit (IHU) has been built.  Bdale Garbee, KB0G, performed the assembly work, and he was able to load and run the operating system on first power up on January 24, 2013.

Meanwhile, the software team is hard at work getting drivers and features ready to fully test the hardware.  They have committed to a March delivery of software for IHU testing.

-Joe KM1P