Chips in Space - The Building of an Amateur Satellite
Steve Bible
10/1/2011 10:08 AM EDT
ARISSat-1, by our observation, has been an operational success—judging by the flood of contact reports on the AMSAT Bulletin Board, posting of hundreds of SSTV photos at the ARISS SSTV Gallery, and submission of over 100,000 frames of telemetry. We had simple goals: make it easy to operate by allowing people to use existing amateur radios, scanners, and computers with sound cards.
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Robotics Developer
Thank you so much for a great series and the opportunity to look over your shoulder on the project. ...
Chips in Space: Lessons learned (Part 2)
Steve Bible
9/24/2011 4:43 AM EDT
For those who have been following this blog and the reader comments, you know that the battery failed eight days into the mission. For the next mission, we need to design a power system where a shorted battery will not render the satellite inoperable. Thankfully, the ARISSat-1 battery failed open; but that was luck. For an extraordinary story about amateur-satellite batteries, read how the battery shorted then reopened 21 years later on AMSAT OSCAR 7.
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kdboyce
Steve, I started my career at Lockheed Missiles and Space and my job was satellite payload analysis ...
Chips in Space: Lessons learned (Part 1)
Steve Bible
9/17/2011 1:00 PM EDT
Project management teaches us to do a post-mortem review at the end of every project, to muse about the things that did and didn’t go right. If things went right, they are called “best practices.” If they did not go as planned or we overlooked something, we call them “lessons learned.” A polite way of saying, we goofed and we promise not to do that again (we hope).
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docdivakar
@Frank Eory: to add a little more, in the teams I managed/led, the project manager was also the ...
Chips in Space: Just the FAQs Ma’am
Steve Bible
9/10/2011 3:49 PM EDT
It’s a lot of fun telling the tale about ARISSat-1. So, when we were offered a table at the Microchip MASTERs Conference, we accepted the invitation with enthusiasm. For the conference, we shipped in our fully functional demonstration satellite from the East Coast to Northern Phoenix and put it on display.
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Steve Bible
Hi Prabhakar, it is possible to launch an amateur/educational satellite from a rocket. The truth of ...
Chips in Space: Design challenges, intrigue and solutions
Steve Bible
9/3/2011 1:00 PM EDT
We’ve covered a lot of ground in the past seven blog posts. The story had a beginning of an idea (hey, let’s fill a suit with electronics and toss it out of the International Space Station!). Twist and turns (we lost the suit, now what?!). Heroic recovery (that’s a nice aluminum space frame you got there!). And a happy ending (We have liftoff! ARISSat-1 is successfully operating in space!).
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Frank Eory
Truly a labor of love, and an amazing accomplishment for a group of busy volunteers with families ...
Chips in Space: Let’s look inside ARISSat-1 (Part 3)
Steve Bible
8/27/2011 1:25 PM EDT
The third and final chapter on the ARISSat-1’s subsystems, which covers all of the Cs: communications, cameras, control and cabling, along with the university experiment that hitched a ride.
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Dixy3
Hi again Steve, Thanks for the excellent 3 part article, I have saved mine to disc for future ...
Chips in Space: Let’s look inside ARISSat-1 (part 2)
Steve Bible
8/21/2011 3:47 PM EDT
Part 2 of our dive into each of ARISSat-1’s subsystems, where I will focus on the solar and battery power systems that are managed by the Power Supply Unit board discussed last week.
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David Ashton
Hmmm..that is exraordinary.. I've had batteries go open and short, but not both...then again I've ...
Chips in Space: Let’s look inside ARISSat-1 (part 1)
Steve Bible
8/13/2011 1:45 PM EDT
It’s been a little over one week since ARISSat-1 was deployed from the International Space Station and it has been operating beautifully. Radio amateurs are submitting signal reports, telemetry and Slow-Scan TV (SSTV) pictures.
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Anqu
Thanks for reply, Seems to be easy but on the receiving side how can we again convert that bytes ...
Chips in Space: SuitSat-2 becomes ARISSat-1 - When we lost our suit! (not really)
Steve Bible
8/7/2011 1:25 AM EDT
In the beginning, ARISSat-1 was to be SuitSat-2. It would have been deployed just like SuitSat-1: during an extra-vehicular activity (EVA) by pushing it away from the International Space Station (ISS).
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Chips in Space: ARISSat-1 deployment update
Steve Bible
8/4/2011 5:39 AM EDT
Steve Bible provides an update of the successful deployment - despite a 'missing' antenna - of the ARISSat-1 satellite from in the International Space Station on Wednesday August 3.
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MajesTEK
-Roman