Hi Zach,
On 9/5/2013 9:03 AM, Zach Leffke wrote:
Just throwing this out there:
But what if the SDX that flew on ARISSat, or the one
that will be developed for the Future of the Fox series could be "sold" (or
given) to the university cubesat community as a radio capable of being used
to deliver science data? Their science mission concludes, control is turned
over to AMSAT, the radios are reconfigured, and they become transponder
birds for the ham community.
Yes, and this is one of the goals of the Fox project too!
We can partner with the universities, providing the transponder and bus
(Fox-1A, RadFXSat) which may be dedicated to their experiment for some
years or not, depending on the downlink needs (i.e. Fox-1 has high speed
for youse guys, and the slow speed accommodates Vanderbilt). We have a
transponder dedicated to ham use when the experiment(s) are through or
even while they are going on.
Or once Fox-1 is finished and all of the details are published, any
institution could use the design for their project and "give back" (as a
gesture of kindness for all the work we saved them and excellent science
we helped them gather) the transponder when they are done with their
science. It gives them a proven reliable system that they don't have to
engineer on their own. It gives us another transponder if not on
launch, at least eventually.
Fox-2 will do the same for ham satellite SDX.
Anybody know any young people who are in a position to help sell this
paradigm to universities? ;-)
Jerry
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