[Laser] LEDs on Fitsat-1

[stuart.wisher at talktalk.net]

Tim,


It may interest readers to know that the satellite is effectively in the same orbit as the ISS (it will increasingly trail behind it when released I believe), so at 400km altitude, it is effectively in a low earth orbit. At my location, NE England, 55 degrees north, the ISS itself is only visible for five minutes per orbit anyway. Given that the whole satellite is a cube of 10 cm on a side (just 4 inches) it is a minor miracle that 200W can be supplied for as much as 3 mins at a time. The satellite is in a 51.6 degree orbit meaning that it only ever gets to a point 400km above 51.6 degrees north before going southwards again. Even this nearest approach means that my location is over 500km slant range to the nearest approach.


I am at present trying to catch one of these "near approaches"  of the ISS on my baseband receiver to see if the reflected sunlight (which I can see with my naked eye) is modulated by vibration of the ISS structure as it has astronauts moving around in it, motors and robot arms running etc. Using my principle that "if you can see it, you can recover a signal from it" I am sure that the optical signal from reflected sunlight is detectable, since I have already detected scintillation noise from planets and bright stars.


Stuart, G8CYW