[South Florida DX Association] ARLS012 AMSAT-UK announces new amateur satellite project

[Bill Marx]

 ZCZC AS12  
> QST de W1AW  
> Space Bulletin 012  ARLS012
> From ARRL Headquarters  
> Newington, CT  August 4, 2004
> To all radio amateurs
> 
> SB SPACE ARL ARLS012
> ARLS012 AMSAT-UK announces new amateur satellite project
> 
> AMSAT-UK Chairman Martin Sweeting, G3YJO, has announced that an
> Amateur Radio transponder will be part of the European Space
> Agency's (ESA) Student Space Exploration and Technology Initiative
> (SSETI) "Express" satellite. Onboard will be a 2.4 GHz transmitter
> and a 437 MHz receiver. The pair will be turned into an amateur FM
> voice transponder after the transmitter serves initial telemetry
> duty.
> 
> "These frequencies will enable the many amateurs who already have
> AMSAT OSCAR 40 equipment to use it in an exciting new way," Sweeting
> said. Sweeting told participants at the 2004 AMSAT-UK Colloquium
> July 30-August 1 that AMSAT-UK has arranged with the ESA to
> provide--at very short notice--an S band transmitter for the SSETI
> Express. The 2.4 GHZ transmitter will become the downlink of the
> single-channel FM U/S transponder. Holger Eckart, DF2FQ, will
> provide the UHF receiver.
> 
> An AMSAT-UK team is developing the 2.4 GHz downlink exciter,
> switching-mode power supply and control interfaces. A 3 W 2.4 GHz
> power amplifier--identical to the one flying in the recently
> launched AO-51 "Echo" spacecraft--already has been completed. The S
> band antennas consist of three flat-plate patches, engineered and
> produced by Wroclaw University of Technology in Poland.
> 
> The SSETI Express is believed to be the first-ever pan-European
> student satellite with more than 100 students and their teachers at
> several European universities working on the project. The 2.4 GHz
> downlink transmitter will send satellite telemetry and data at 38.4
> kb/s before being switched over to voice transponder operation once
> onboard experiments have been completed.
> 
> Spacecraft integration is due to start this month at the ESTEC
> laboratories in the Netherlands. Plans call for launching the 80 kg
> spacecraft into a 680 km sun-synchronous orbit next April from
> Plestek, Russia.
> NNNN
> /EX