Visita a la estación 16-11-2012

Ayer viernes realizamos una visita de la estación y de nuestra antena a un grupo de alumnos de primero interesados. Les explicamos en qué consiste el proyecto TelCUBE y las actividades que estamos organizando dentro de él. Siendo alumnos de primero es normal que todavía no se entendieran algunos tecnicismos, pero una cosa si abundaba, ¡la curiosidad!

¡Gracias a Diego Vilca por organizar la visita!

Si alguien está interesado en hacernos una visita, nos puede escribir a telcube.join@gmail.com y organizaremos un grupo.

Presentaciones COMM y ADCS

Acabamos de subir las últimas presentaciones:

• Presentación 15 de octubre del sistema de COMM y primeras tareas aquí .
• Presentación de sistema ADCS aquí .

Aquellos que todavía estaban dudando de la tarea a la que apuntarse, podeis mandar vuestras preguntas o vuestra decision a telcube.join@gmail.com . Lo mismo para aquellos que no pudieran venir y estén interesados en participar.

A lo largo de estos días nos iremos comunicando con los distintos grupos de trabajo. También estamos trabajando en crear un grupo de Google con distintas secciones para que sea más fácil la coordinación y la colaboración en ficheros compartidos. Esperamos que esté en funcionamiento durante la semana que viene, ¡os iremos avisando!

Presentación tareas

Ya está subida la presentación de ayer: Presentación de tareas TelCUBE

Os recomendamos a todos que echéis un vistazo a los documentos de la bibliografía de las áreas que os interesen.

Presentation uploaded

Thank you all for coming last thursday!

We have uploaded the presentations from last week for anyone interested or anybody who could not attend.

Here is the first one: Presentation 1: TelCUBE

And the second one, concerning our activities so far: Presentation 2: Activities

If you want to participate, even though we have a list of all the attendants to the presentation, we prefer you write us to telcube.join@gmail.com. Indicating what year you are on and (if you want) what area of the project are you most interested in (there is a lot to do in multiple areas: electronics, programming, antenna design, signal analysis, automatizing the ground station, etc).

And last but not least yesterday we finally made the webcam work (after having some problems bringing the power from the ground station all the way up to the roof). Now we can use it while we follow satellites to check out the movement of the antenna. The next step is to find out how to integrate it on the website for everyone to see (ideas on how to do this are welcome :) ).

ISS Cubesats and TelCUBE Presentation

Today in between 14:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC five new cubesats will be launched into orbit from the International Space Station. Out those five cubesats, four will be emitting in amateur radio bands (in VHF or UHF). 

More information about the cubesats here: http://www.pe0sat.vgnet.nl/2012/iss-amateur-radio-cubesats-to-deploy/

 

Ground stations around the world are being asked to try to receive the telemetry during their operation.

At TelCUBE we will be listening!

Interested in participating? Interested in other space-tech activities we are working on? Check this link also (when it works... :) ): http://dat.etsit.upm.es/?q=node/14841

Come check us out next Wednesday (10th October) at 14:15 in the A-140!

 

Working on the ETSIT-UPM UHF/VHF ground station

As many of you know, lately we have been busy installing a ground station at the ETSIT-UPM. It is almost complete and we will continue in September tweaking it so that it will be soon into full operation.

We have already received several beacons from different amateur satellites ( see for example this youtube video). We  also have recorded another small video from the reception of the morse code beacon emitted by the CO-57. A Cubesat launched in 2003!

After August our work will focus on adjusting the software to our antenna so it is possible to easily save sound files of the signals received and decode them.

Screenshot of Spectrum Lab as an example (we also are using MixW and Ham Radio Deluxe)

The control of the preamplifiers and the polarizers from the antenna is done by an arduino:

Polarizers (up) and amplifiers (down)

One of the preliminary set ups

We also want to thank Miguel Salas that helped us with a program of his own creation to make measurements of the S parameters and the SWR.

One of the measurements made in VHF.

 We even have installed a camera to control the status of the antenna and also to operate it remotely in the future.

Juan and Ramon enjoying the sun.

Don't forget to follow us in Facebook and in Twitter. Also remember that everyone is welcome to participate in this project :).
Have a nice summer holiday and see you in September!

Bye!

Conference report: Modular architecture for small satellites

A conference about small satellites was held today at ETSIT-UPM. It was part of the seminar “Advances in Electronic Systems Engineering”, organized by the Department of Electronic Engineering (Departamento de Ingeniería Electrónica, DIE).

Today, professor Claudio Passerone, from the Electronic and Telecommunication Department of Politecnico di Torino has presented the platform known as Aramis.

Aramis is a modular platform for small satellites that is being developed at the Electronic and Telecommunication Department of Politecnico di Torino. Aramis is based on the concept of tiles, a standardized building block to be used to build small spacecrafts according to specific requirements. By combining tiles in various number and kind, different satellites in terms of size, shape, functionality and performance can be obtained. To drive costs down, commercial off-the-shelf components (COTS) are used wherever possible.

In this interesting seminar we got to learn about a new standardized platform and compare its possibilities with cubesats. We want to thank professor Passerone for having been here today and we wish him and his team good luck to continue with this amazing project.

The two kind of tiles arranged to form a cube

TelCUBE at SATELEC 2012

Once again, TelCUBE has taken part in the recent edition of SATELEC, the Employement and Techonology Forum that is held every year at ETSIT-UPM.

In this conference, Prof. Ramón Martínez and Javier Hernando have presented some concepts and ideas about cubesats and have summarized the main activities that TelCUBE has been developing in the last year, as the participation in the Mission Idea Contest, the QB50 project or the GENSO ground station that is currently being built at ETSIT-UPM.

SATELEC, that this year organizes the 38th edition of this forum has the goal of bringing together business and educational communities. In this context, students could know the different opportunities they have to work in the space industry and how an university project based on cubesats as TelCUBE can help them to reach the goal of working in this industry.

As part of this conference, a Regional Seminar of the Nano-Satellite Mission Idea Contest has also been held, to explain the students how they can take part in the second edition of the contest. With the presence of the regional coordinators Ramón Martínez and Hector Bedón, Prof. Martínez has explained the main criteria of the contest and shared with the attendants the experiences of the first edition, where our members Miguel Gallego and Javier Hernando became semifinalists with their proposal Fire Alarm Constellation.

SATELEC 2012 at ETSIT-UPM

Javier Hernando

Prof. Ramón Martínez

Héctor Bedón and Ramón Martínez

Miguel Gallego, Javier Hernando and Ramón Martínez

We would like to thank the Organising Committee of SATELEC XXXVIII Edition for helping us be there one more year. We hope to come back again in future editions.