ARISS International Teleconference

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 11:30 UTC (7:30 am ET)

Participants:

Frank Bauer

Rosalie White

Mark Steiner

Sergey Samburov

Larry Agabekov

Masanobu Tsuji

Robin Haighton

Gaston Bertels

Lou McFadin

Carlos Eavis

Miles Mann

Ken Pulfer

Keith Pugh

Graham Shirville

Kenneth Ransom

Interpreter, Elena Schmidt

Not present:

Tadeu Fernandes

Daniel Lamoureux

Keigo Komuro

Carol Jackson

Dave Larsen

Ken Nichols

Bill Boston

ARISS I Agenda:

Administrative Session

1. ARISS-I meeting, October 2006, Presenter: F. Bauer

ARISS-I meeting will be Monday and Tuesday, October 9 and 10, 2006 in conjunction with the AMSAT-NA Symposium in San Francisco, California. The Symposium will run Friday and Saturday, October 6 and 7. The speaker for the big banquet on Saturday will be Bill McArthur, and we are anticipating an interesting presentation from Bill that will cover his amateur radio activities aboard the ISS. A SuitSat 2 hardware meeting will be held on Sunday afternoon. Frank will be working to develop the agendas and the list of attendees.

Gaston has been requested to write an article for a German amateur radio magazine, and would like to know whether he can announce the start of the effort to launch a second SuitSat project, for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1. No technical details are ready for release, however.

2. New Business (administrative only)

Robin queried to see if there were any more nominations for ARISS officers as the elections will be held in October. Frank suggested one last email, as not all delegates are online today.

General Session

3. SSTV Status, Presenter: S. Samburov

Frank thanked Sergey and Pavel for their efforts to get the SSTV system on the air. Sergey noted that Pavel has been very interested and active, calling Sergey at home and requesting his presence at the control center. Pavel has just recently sent down pictures showing his reconfigurations of the system, but Sergey has not had a chance to send them out yet. He hopes to send them out this evening. There are some issues with the Kenwood where it becomes non-responsive to command inputs. Pavel requested that he change out the power supply, in case it is not supplying a high-enough voltage. It appears that the radio is being controlled by someone else, but there is no way for it to be controlled from the ground. Also, when a picture is transmitted, the transmitter remains on even after the picture is completed, even after a power cycle. The only way to stop it is to remove 28v from the power connector. The fan is not moving at all on its own, but it does rotate freely. Pavel mounted an external fan, but it is not helping. Sergey asked Pavel to get details on the round SSTV connector. Sergey asked Pavel to send down pictures of the display.

Frank thanked Sergey and Pavel for working this, and asked that we all wait for full information before we started interpreting it to form our opinions as to what actually happened.

Sergey noted that Pavel is spending all of his (limited) free time trying to trouble-shoot this problem, and it is somewhat urgent as Sergey will be traveling in the next week or so.

Lou requested a special telecon with Sergey to review all the data, try to understand it, and develop a possible plan of action. Sergey asked if we could talk with Kenwood, and Frank has already heard from Hiroto. Sergey wonders if there is interference from the computer or the SSTV interface that is causing problems for the Kenwood.

Frank requested that Sergey coordinate his travel to the US with the US team once the funding actually arrives, to ensure that we are all operating on the same plan.

Frank summarized: we have received good SSTV images downlinked from the ISS via the Kenwood D-700, but there are issues with the radio locking up and becoming non-responsive. Pavel has had to power off the Kenwood in this case to protect it. In the meantime we are using the Ericsson for school contacts.

4. SuitSat-2 Status, Presenter: L. McFadin

Despite the last minute inability of Sergey Samburov to attend the meeting August 7 – 10, 2006 at Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, the US portion of the technical team pressed on to try to identify a design for later work with Sergey. Much progress was made in identifying capabilities and the top-level block diagram, based on designs already in work at various organizations as well as the previous work for SuitSat 1. The suit, batteries, and safety interlock system will be the same as the first time. The team is planning to use two portable, flexible solar power systems that will each provide 30 W peak and 5 W orbital average (10 W total orbital average) to supplement the batteries and extend the lifetime of the operations part of the mission. An Integrated Housekeeping Unit (IHU) will contain the main computer for telemetry, stored messages, etc. The software transponder being used on the Eagle satellite project will be the basis of the RF portion of the system. An antenna system is being designed that will not require a ground plane. The system will be extremely flexible, providing several operating modes including a CW beacon (as Sputnik had), FM voice for greetings, SSTVincluding live images from onboard cameras, and some other exciting possibilities. Many of these components would be suitable for other small amateur radio satellites. AMSAT is trying to take advantage of this opportunity as a development platform. A report from the design team is forthcoming that will cover more in detail.

5. New business

Frank noted that Roy Neal, K6DUE, passed away three years ago, and took a minute to remember his influence on the program and his value as a friend.

Sergey coordinated operations for Dice-K with Gaston and Frank.

Frank emphasized the importance of getting together monthly, sharing what all we are doing and working closely as an international team.

Respectfully submitted,

Mark Steiner, K3MS, for the ARISS Team