Just to give everyone a little update on how the AMSAT NextGen Program is doing @ Binghamton University . . .
(a) CONTROL & EXPERIMENT SYSTEMS - The Systems Engineering students are doing well analyzing the ARISSat documentation and will be scheduling meetings with the primary AMSAT engineering contact to discuss documentation questions. - Identified Design Changes Needing to Occur for NextGen: * The Control/Safety Timer needs to be adapted to conform with the CubeSat deployment switch standard * Consolidation of Camera functionality into a separate camera payload board (functionality is currently spread across a number of boards in the stack) (b) RF SYSTEMS - The Systems Engineering students are doing well analyzing the ARISSat documentation and will be scheduling meetings with the primary AMSAT engineering contact to discuss documentation questions. - Identified Design Changes Needing to Occur for NextGen: * Antenna design choice - single dual-band vs dual mono-band * New RF container design needed (c) POWER & STRUCTURE SYSTEMS - The Systems Engineering students are doing well analyzing the ARISSat documentation and will be scheduling meetings with the primary AMSAT engineering contact to discuss documentation questions. - The Hardware Engineering students have been busy creating a preliminary design for solar panel deployment and use of supercapacitors to replace the battery. A Preliminary Design Review is being scheduled in mid-November with the AMSAT Engineering Team. - Identified Design Changes Needing to Occur for NextGen: * Replace Battery with modular stacks of Supercapacitors in parallel to the Solar Panels * Shrink ICB (Interconnect Board) to fit within CubeSat frame * Reduce PSU footprint by moving camera power function to a Camera Payload Board (CPB) * Slight PSU voltage supply design change * Remove test/program load functionality from ICB to external test board (XTB) via standard CubeSat & PPOD maintenance ports (per CubeSat spec.) We are still on-target to have an engineering model ready for the AMSAT table at the 2010 Dayton Hamvention with readiness for launch later in 2010. Alex Harvilchuck, N3NP NextGen Program Manager _______________________________________________ Sent via [email protected]. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
