Summary of the 2nd QB50 Workshop

The Second QB50 Workshop is already finished and our team members are back at home again after two days full of interesting lectures.

This time, Professor Ramón Martinez and the students Miguel Gallego and Javier Hernando have been the Spanish representatives of an event that has got together about 120 people from 28 different countries, including several Universities from all over the world, space agencies as ESA and NASA and important companies as ISIS and Pumpkin Inc.

Following the programme, we have seen some interesting projects from other Universities and different sensors and subsystems proposed to be part of the QB50 mission. GENSO has been another important concept in these lectures and, with our daily work, we hope to be part of that Network too. As an application of this Network, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne did a real-time demonstration of receiving in Belgium data from a satellite by using antennas placed in Netherlands and Switzerland.

It has been a great opportunity to meet again with friends from other of our adventures and knowing personally new people who we hope to see again soon. Of course, we would also want to thank all the Staff members that have made this Worshop be possible and that have made us feel like if we were at home. We wish to be again in the 3^rd Workshop in January 2012 and we will work hard to get that.

As usually, we offer you some photos about this event and we invite you to visit us at Facebook or Twitter to get more information about the latest news.

Real time demonstration by EPFL.

PhoneSat, a project by NASA.

Professor Ramón Martínez and Miguel Gallego with a cubesat kit of Pumpkin.

Javier Hernando and Miguel Gallego with a cubesat kit of Pumpkin.

Discovering Belgium

Our expedition to the heart of Belgium is already there, ready for the 2^nd QB50 Workshop that will start tomorrow.

Before the first conferences in the Lecture Hall at Von Karman Institute (VKI), our team members have been exploring the Wallon Region, in the South of Brussels. As latest news, we offer you here the first images of the adventures of our students Javier Hernando and Miguel Gallego in important villages as Charleroi or Waterloo, and their trip to the forests surrounding Rhode-Saint-Genèse, where the VKI is located.

Don’t miss the opportunity to follow us in this event by using Facebook or Twitter, or even become a follower of this website to have the latest news.

Saint Christopher Church, in Charleroi.

City Council of Charleroi.

Waterloo, in the heart of the Walloon Region.

Wellington Museum, in Waterloo.

Forest in Rhode-Saint-Genèse.

Forest in Rhode-Saint-Genèse.

TelCUBE goes to Belgium

As part of the programmed activities of TelCUBE Project, some of our team members will attend to the 2^nd QB50 Workshop, held at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (Rhode-Sain-Genèse, Belgium), next week.

QB50 is initiative of the Von Karman Institute (VKI), the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA with the scientific objective to measure in situ the temporal and spatial variations of a number of key constituents and parameters in the lower thermosphere (90-320 km) with a network of 50 double CubeSats.

It is foreseen that 38 CubeSats will be provided by universities in 22 European countries, 8 by universities in the US, 2 by universities in Canada and 2 by Japanese universities. TelCUBE has already expressed the interest of ETSIT-UPM in taking part of this project by sending one of the 71 Letters of Intent that has accepted by the Secretary of the QB50 Project (up to 20 June 2011).

This Second Workshop (the first was held also at VKI in November 2009) will focus on project related matters, such as sensor selection, orbital dynamics, ground station networks and frequency allocation, launcher interface, deployment system, funding, schedule milestones, information exchange and possible synergy/collaboration between CubeSat teams.

Soon we will bring you news related to the travel and the Workshop. Don’t forget you can also follow us at Twitter and Facebook.

Placing the station

The works for our future GENSO ground station continue and we have been evaluating the different places in ETSIT-UPM where it can be located. After measuring some zones of the attic, with privileged sights of the skyline of Madrid, we have decided a tentative place to develop the ground station.

We show you here the first photos of this place and we will keep you informed about our progress to let you check the evolution of our future works.

Tentative place for the future GENSO ground station

Sights of Madrid from ETSIT-UPM

Miguel Gallego and Professor Ramón Martínez measuring the structure.

Miguel Gallego and Juan Ruiz studying a similar base.

Our work continues in summer

The summer is already here but TelCUBE team keeps on working in different projects. These last months we have been developing the plans for our future GENSO ground station and we hope to be able to show you our progress soon.

In addition, we have been working on different future proposals related to the QB50 project, and we are preparing our travel to Belgium to attend the 2^nd QB50 Workshop at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics.

We will inform you about this event and other activities of TelCUBE Project.