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SpaceC06
Lieutenant Junior Grade
Joined: Jun 28, 2005
Member#: 10704
Posts: 52
Location: Wild West...aka NM
   
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 Posted:
Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:57 pm Post subject: |
 
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Go Albi! Now you just need to attend Small Sat and present all of your data 
I think a meeting would be great! I am not sure if I could make it to florida in that time frame b/c of work though. That is when our test campaign starts for one of our spacecraft at AFRL. Keep me posted though! If I had a chance to make it would be February, space stuff always slips!
Also there is other space cadet oriented events such as XPrize in New Mexico or gathering of astronauts (40th anniversary of the moon landing, etc) at KSC and Houston. Just some suggestions! |
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 Albi 
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: Mar 21, 2004
Member#: 5692
Posts: 340
Location: The Netherlands
 
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Posted:
Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:12 pm Post subject: |
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| SpaceC06 wrote: |
| Go Albi! Now you just need to attend Small Sat and present all of your data |
I heard today that I am actually going: so see you there, Space 
Last edited by Albi on Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:39 am; edited 1 time in total |
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molossus
Admiral (Administrator)
Joined: Aug 09, 2005
Member#: 11167
Posts: 3308
Location: Warsaw & once in a blue moon Szczecin (Poland)
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Posted:
Wed Dec 31, 2008 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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Watched interesting video today.
I think it fits not only this thread but also today's moment of 2008 turning into 2009.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081231.html
_________________
<i>"The piano keys are black and white,
But they sound like a million colors in your mind"</i>
(from "Spider's Web" by <a href="http://katiemelua.com/music/#KatieMelua">Katie Melua</a>)
Avatar is from work of art by Drew Struzan |
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 SiriusCreations
Admiral (Administrator)
Joined: Aug 26, 2007
Member#: 18704
Posts: 4419
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
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Posted:
Fri Jan 02, 2009 3:43 am Post subject: |
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Great video molossus. Thanks for sharing. I am big fan of timelapses in documentaries
_________________
That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you. (Andy Dufresne)
Sirius' Concerts
NUTs & RATs |
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molossus
Admiral (Administrator)
Joined: Aug 09, 2005
Member#: 11167
Posts: 3308
Location: Warsaw & once in a blue moon Szczecin (Poland)
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Posted:
Fri Jan 02, 2009 4:19 am Post subject: |
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You are welcome Sirius! 
_________________
<i>"The piano keys are black and white,
But they sound like a million colors in your mind"</i>
(from "Spider's Web" by <a href="http://katiemelua.com/music/#KatieMelua">Katie Melua</a>)
Avatar is from work of art by Drew Struzan |
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Albi
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: Mar 21, 2004
Member#: 5692
Posts: 340
Location: The Netherlands
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Posted:
Sun Jan 04, 2009 11:19 am Post subject: |
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Here's an update on our baby, as promised to Sirius the other day There are not many new pictures or videos that I can show you but I'll post some interesting / fun old ones instead
First let me say that: Delfi-C3 is still working after more than 250 days (over 8 months) and more than 3700 orbits around the Earth and the operations team (including me) is proud to be operating the only active Dutch satellite on orbit
Second (something I forgot to mention): we are very proud to have been officially recognized as an OSCAR (Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) 17 days after launch (the first of three or four satellites on our launch) by AMSAT-NA. The satellite now carries the title DO-64, with DO standing for Dutch Oscar or Delfi Oscar and the 64 being the 64th satellite to be added to the ranks of OSCARs 
In the last update I mentioned that Delfi-C3 had been put in communication mode for the HAM operators around the world to use it. Delfi-C3 has been in that mode for almost 2 or 3 months before we decided to deactive this mode. The reason for this deactivation is that it was getting harder and harder for the HAM operators to get a signal through the 'transponder', i.e. the device that relays the signals. Delfi-C3 is now in a mode where it only transmits housekeeping data, e.g. temperatures and currents, so that we can keep an eye on it while we try to figure out what is going on. The most likely reason is that the receiver side of the transponder has gone 'deaf', i.e. its performance has decreased significantly. During testing we have been able to get a signal through ourselves so we know for sure that each and every part of the satellite is still functional
Both of our experiments are also still completely functional. It was quite a tense moment to see if they still worked after three months of inactivity, but everything went fine
So much for the text, on to some pictures
First, I am going to show you a picture of what the program that we (and HAM operators around the world) use to decode telemetry from Delfi-C3 (click for a larger version). All the latest housekeeping telemetry is displayed in this screen and we can also view one of the payload's data in another screen. This program stores all telemetry it decodes and then submits it to our data collection server without user intervention. We have gotten many compliments on this set-up and it works like a charm (we're still getting a lot of data ).
Another fun thing to do is to listen for the satellite while you're out in the field. You can see a picture of how that works below. In the picture you see Delfi-C3 operations team (fltr: Wouter, Wouter and me) holding hand-held antennas and portable radios to listen to the telemetry signals of our satellite. This set-up is actually not too dissimilar from the set-up used by the HAM operator from the US that first heard our satellite. The signal is so strong it can be received on a whip antenna of a car, if you have the right radio that is
One thing I forgot to mention during all the pre-launch chaos was the slumber party we had before it  We watched Apollo 13 to get in the mood while we watched the countdown timer... (scary  ).
 Note: actual screenshot of the countdown timer
And finally, to show how crazy HAM operators can get, I'd like to refer you to the Delfi-C3 cardboard model: http://www.delfic3.nl/photoblog/?p=171
That's it for now I'll try looking up some pictures this week and I'll post those as soon as I can.
If you have any questions etc., drop me a pm or leave them in this thread |
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SiriusCreations
Admiral (Administrator)
Joined: Aug 26, 2007
Member#: 18704
Posts: 4419
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
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Posted:
Sun Jan 04, 2009 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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Again thank you for the update. Great news it is still working.
And congratulations to 'win' the OSCAR
_________________
That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you. (Andy Dufresne)
Sirius' Concerts
NUTs & RATs |
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SiriusCreations
Admiral (Administrator)
Joined: Aug 26, 2007
Member#: 18704
Posts: 4419
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
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Posted:
Sat Apr 11, 2009 5:45 am Post subject: |
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just bumping this thread, because I checked the Delfu-C3 site to see if there is any news.
I saw last news item was from januari 29th.
So Albi, can you give us an update please?
tnx
_________________
That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you. (Andy Dufresne)
Sirius' Concerts
NUTs & RATs |
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 Twopop
Rear Admiral (Ambassador)
Joined: Jul 21, 2004
Member#: 7382
Posts: 2673
Location: Oregon
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Posted:
Sat Apr 11, 2009 11:24 am Post subject: |
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| SiriusCreations wrote: |
| Albi, can you give us an update please? |
Yes, please do!
One thing I know .. Albi has a 1st anniversary of the launch coming up in about 2 weeks. |
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Albi
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: Mar 21, 2004
Member#: 5692
Posts: 340
Location: The Netherlands
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Posted:
Wed Apr 15, 2009 3:36 pm Post subject: |
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Wow! After getting some pressure from several SST members (you know you are!) here's an update
First off, Delfi-C3 has been in science mode since January 2009 and is still performing very well on orbit. As TwoPop pointed out we're approaching the satellite's first birthday on the 28th of April. There's going to be a big barbeque for everybody that has ever been involved in the project, just like we did a year ago ('unfortunately' I will be on holiday in the USA on that day). The orbit counter has reached 5222 by now and Delfi-C3 has been in orbit and functional for 352 days and counting.
Since the last update we have gone back to the spring season which means that Delfi-C3 is now also in sunlight over our groundstation at night and we get some more data. Especially the I-V curves are interesting during these passes as the solar panels are still cold coming out of the shadow and have a different performance compared to when the are heated up. It also means however that during the passes in daylight the satellite has been on and in sunglight longer and the satellite is warmer in general. This could give us some new clues as to why the uplink on the radio with HAM transponder service has been malfunctioned / performs so terribly.
About those HAM operators. I have mentioned a few times how they have helped us out tremendously with reports on the satellite and actually decoding and sending us data. Even though the 'new'-factor is off the project we still have data coming in through this network every single day. To give you an idea of how many radio amateurs have registered with us to send us data please take a look at these two maps (click to enlarge) that give an overview of all the sheer number of 'ground stations' for our satellite. By the way, there are two maps because google maps only supports 200 placemarks on a single page
The placemarks represent a grand total of 354 radio amateurs around the world. Of those 354, we have received data from 172 which is about 54%. In total there are now approximately 600.000 data frames in our databases, which is roughly 85 Megabytes of data. Of this data we have gathered approximately 25% with our own groundstation, meaning radio amateurs are responsible for 75% of our data!!
To give you an idea of how much data we get per day, below's an overview of just that (yes, the chart's a bit outdated :p). As you can see there was a 'goldrush' right after launch with a record day of over 12.000 telemetry frames. After that the data return slowly dropped until we switched to the transponder service around the 27th of July, which doesn't produce any data. The days we got a bit of data was when we sent commands to check out the satellite's health. Around half of October we switched the satellite to a safe mode to try and diagnose some problems with the transponder In this mode the satellite doesn't have its payloads actived so there is less data. This went on for about 3 months and in January of this year we went back to science mode, increasing the amount of data gathered each day.
The amount of data is actually a bit overwhelming and a bit it to our shame we haven't really gotten around to processing it. The only drawback of the radio amateur cooperation so far is that we can get multiple copies of the data, which has to be filtered etc. There are some nice charts you can make with the unfiltered data however, an example of which is below.
There are three charts, each containing one month of data. On the horizontal axis is the time and on the vertical axis is the voltage of the power bus in our satellite. Now, because of the unique design that doesn't include a battery we are completely dependent on the solar panels. Because of the design of our power system, which converts the power from the solar panels to something we can use for the satellite, the voltage on this power bus can sometimes drop. This has to do with the satellite freely tumbling through space and the sun illuminating multiple panels at once. There is a (somewhat experimental) system on the satellite that should slow this tumbling down and by these charts you can see that it actually works
First month after launch: the voltage on the power bus drops regularly.
Second month after launch: the voltage on the power still drops from time to time but less frequent than in the first month.
The last month we have data of (a bit outdated again): the voltage on the power bus almost never drops It does look like the drops are longer, which would indicate that the lighting situation that creates such a drop lasts longer, which would also indicate a satellite that's tumbling slower
We can not determine how fast the satellite's tumbling with just this data, but it does give you a very nice indication of that a system we designed is actually working
That's it for now, not much to report really because the satellite is still working so well I do want to thank all the SST members who have been showing their interest and enthusiasm about the project. Working on and operating the satellite has been getting kind of 'normal' over the past year but your reactions always make me think about how lucky I am to be doing what I'm doing and know all of you. Thank you!!
ps: for any question or comments you can always send me a pm or post in this thread
Last edited by Albi on Thu Apr 16, 2009 7:47 am; edited 1 time in total |
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SiriusCreations
Admiral (Administrator)
Joined: Aug 26, 2007
Member#: 18704
Posts: 4419
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
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Posted:
Thu Apr 16, 2009 6:28 am Post subject: |
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Thank you Albi for this nice update
_________________
That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you. (Andy Dufresne)
Sirius' Concerts
NUTs & RATs |
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Twopop
Rear Admiral (Ambassador)
Joined: Jul 21, 2004
Member#: 7382
Posts: 2673
Location: Oregon
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Posted:
Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:55 am Post subject: |
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| Albi wrote: |
| Of this data we have gathered approximately 25% with our own groundstation, meaning radio amateurs are responsible for 75% of our data!! ... The only drawback of the radio amateur cooperation so far is that we can get multiple copies of the data, which has to be filtered etc. |
Wow - that is fantastic to get so much interest and support from outside your group. Does it take a great deal of time to go thru the lists to find the duplications?
Thank YOU, Albi, for the wonderful reports. Fascinating! You are a lucky man to have a job you love so much. |
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Albi
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: Mar 21, 2004
Member#: 5692
Posts: 340
Location: The Netherlands
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Posted:
Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:23 am Post subject: |
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| Twopop wrote: |
Wow - that is fantastic to get so much interest and support from outside your group. Does it take a great deal of time to go thru the lists to find the duplications?
Thank YOU, Albi, for the wonderful reports. Fascinating! You are a lucky man to have a job you love so much. |
Two
Yes it is, we did however involve the radio amateurs in our project from the start. A group of Dutch HAMs attended some of our reviews and helped us with testing the radio over longer distances. The international HAMs we kept updated by attending their colloquia among other things. On launch day we posted updated on their message boards, I think they were very pleased with the amount and frequency of information we were giving them. So as you can see it didn't come for free but was well worth it
We don't go through these lists manually of course hehe The problem is that we don't have a good enough filter at this moment due to people in the project not finishing their work among other things. It's a bit sad really.
On top of that the problem is harder than we thought when we were designing and building the satellite. Basically we give every frame two numbers to identify them:- Boot number. This is a number recorded by the on-board computer and tells us how many times the satellite has booted.
- Packet number. This is a number recorded by the software in our radios and it tells us how many frames the radio has sent since it was turned on.
Now, combining these two numbers should give each and every frame that is ever sent by the satellite a unique number. So originally we would just have to look at that number, check if all the frames with that number had the exact same content and discard all of them except one. Easy There was however a complication in the computer system that didn't allow us to use the memory that stored the boot number the way we liked. We have basically set this memory to read-only mode to prevent bad things from happening. This means that the boot number is now stuck at a specific number and we lose the unique frame numbers. So now we have to start looking at who submitted the frame and at what time among other things, it's a lot more complicated than the original system.
The worst thing about not having the filter is that you can't really do any analysis. You can't make charts over time because they contain duplicates and certain values may appear to occur more often than they really do. It's frustrating really. I could probably whip something up but I refuse to get drawn into that.
On a not so sidenote:
During final integration and testing a Dutch kids program called 'Klokhuis' (meaning 'apple core') has recorded an episode about our satellite. They were in the cleanroom and at the vibration test facility. I know it's in Dutch but it contains some cool footage (especially from the vibration test) and I'm in there too (see if you can find me ). There also some funny sketches related to the episode's subject. You can check out the episode at http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=9308737 |
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SiriusCreations
Admiral (Administrator)
Joined: Aug 26, 2007
Member#: 18704
Posts: 4419
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
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Posted:
Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:48 am Post subject: |
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| Albi wrote: |
| During final integration and testing a Dutch kids program called 'Klokhuis' (meaning 'apple core') has recorded an episode about our satellite.... |
Great never saw that. Thanks for sharing and btw Yes I saw you
_________________
That's the beauty of music. They can't take that away from you. (Andy Dufresne)
Sirius' Concerts
NUTs & RATs |
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Albi
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: Mar 21, 2004
Member#: 5692
Posts: 340
Location: The Netherlands
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Posted:
Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:52 am Post subject: |
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| SiriusCreations wrote: |
| Great never saw that. Thanks for sharing and btw Yes I saw you |
Sirius: they recorded it back in July 2007 so that might explain it You can find a picture of that at http://www.delfic3.nl/photoblog/?p=96 |
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