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WG3K > ANS 19.08.24 14:30l 74 Lines 4545 Bytes #161 (0) @ AMSAT
BID : ANS231.9
Read: GUEST
Subj: Satellite Shorts from All Over
Path: IZ3LSV<DB0ERF<DK0WUE<DK0WUE<VK5RSV<VK2RZ<KC9UHI<KA1VSC<WG3K
Sent: 240819/1227Z 7329@WG3K.#SMD.MD.USA.NOAM LinBPQ6.0.24
+ A Chinese Long March 6A rocket launched 18 Qianfan broadband Internet
satellites into polar orbit last week. Shanghai Spacecom Satellite
Technology (SSST)â€Ös new constellation, translated as "Thousand Sails," may
grow to as many as 14,000 satellites. It joins potentially two other
under-development broadband Chinese megaconstellations, each proposing over
10,000 satellites, in competition with OneWeb, Kupier, and Starlink.
Unfortunately, the LM-6Aâ€Ös upper stage appears to have malfunctioned and
scattered over 700 pieces of space debris in a fairly high 800 km orbit
(again). The debris at this altitude will likely take about a century for
orbital decay. (ANS thanks The Orbital Index for the above information)
+ Orbital Space has announced its Lunar Program to send a student-built
experiment to the Moon, marking the Arab worldâ€Ös first privately funded
lunar mission. The experiment by students from AGH University of Science
and Technology in Poland focuses on analyzing interactions between lunar
regolith and various materials that could be used in making cables and
connectors for future lunar missions. Astrobotic will carry the payload on
its third lunar mission aboard a Griffin-class lunar lander, targeting
launch no earlier than Q4 2026. (ANS thanks Spacewatch Global for the above
information)
+ The 2024 Olympic Games officially began in Paris, France on July 26, with
athletes coming from around the world to compete. Meanwhile, above the
world â€ö on our orbiting laboratory, the International Space Station â€ö
NASA's astronauts got into the Olympic spirit. Check out their training
montage from space, followed by a message to Earth from astronaut Matt
Dominick at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycDoaIn6wuk (ANS thanks The
Orbital Index and NASA for the above information)
+ From Dave, G4DPZ, regarding the FUNcube Data Warehouse: "Our hosting
provider has told us that they will be migrating our services to a new
virtual machine on the 1st of September. Unfortunately the versions of the
MySQL database server and Java runtime available on the new instance are
not compatible with the current application implementation. Therefore I
have to rebuild the development tool chain and migrate the application to
suit the new instance. The work is underway but may take us into early
September. We do know that database table migration works as we have
already done a test of migrating the several GB of database between
machines. If we do have any outage, the dashboards will upload when they
detect the new instance is alive." (ANS thanks Dave Johnson, G4DPZ, Hon.
Sec., AMSAT-UK, for the above information)
+ The SpaceX Transporter-11 rideshare mission launched 116 payloads from
Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on August 16th. Four of these
payloads carry transmitters on amateur bands. NIGHTJAR and TORO carry
amateur UHF transmitters, but are not IARU coordinated. QUBE carries an
amateur UHF transmitter, but its IARU coordination was declined. ORESAT0.5
is the sole IARU coordinated amateur mission on this launch with downlinks
of 436.500 MHz and 2422.0 MHz. More information about ORESAT can be found
at https://www.oresat.org/satellites/oresat0-5. Discussion regarding this
launch can be found on the LibreSpace forum at
https://community.libre.space/t/spacex-f9-transporter-11-rideshare-vsfb-slc-...
(ANS thanks LibreSpace and the ORESAT team for the above information)
+ Three AMSAT GridMaster Awards were awarded over the past week: #67 was
awarded to Endaf, N6UTC, #68 was awarded to Raymond, KN2K, and #69 was
awarded to Steven, KC1MMC. Congratulations to both. Additionally, two
Reverse VUCC Awards were issued. #15 was awarded to Sean, KX9X, with 103
grids and #16 was issued to Randy, ND0C, with 109 grids. Congratulations to
all the new award recipients! More information about AMSAT's awards program
can be found at https://www.amsat.org/awards-2/ (ANS thanks Bruce Paige,
KK5DO, AMSAT Director of Contests and Awards for the above information)
+ IO-117's digipeater has not been operational for the past week. No
further information is available regarding its status or expected timeframe
for a potential return to service.
+ AMSAT's Operations team, in coordination with the University of Maine and
AMSAT Engineering, continues to work to complete MESAT1's science mission.
More telemetry coverage is needed! If you have UHF receive capability,
please download FoxTelem https://www.amsat.org/tlm/ and help us capture
more data. (ANS thanks AMSAT for the above information)
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