OpenAstroTracker is a recently published open hardware 3D printed tracking mount designed to move DSLR cameras for astrophotography. The mount supports heavy long lenses, so we think that this mount could also have the ability to move long directional antennas for satellite tracking. It could also be interesting to modify it for automatic aircraft photography, similar to what we've seen in this previous post where a Raspberry Pi camera on a pan-tilt mount was used with ADS-B data from an RTL-SDR to track aircraft in the sky with the camera.
The 3D printer files are available on Thingiverse, and the mechanical and electronics build guide, and Arduino code is available on GitHub. The build seems to be quite a bit easier compared to a SatNOGS rotator which is another 3D printed open hardware rotator, but it is yet to be seen what sort of antenna sizes it could rotate.
OpenAstroTracker: Could be modified for satellite tracking.
The Mission for Education and Multimedia Engagement Satellite (MEMESat-1) is planned to be the first meme broadcasting cube satellite ever created. If you aren't down with modern slang and are not familiar with the word "meme", that may be because although first coined in 1976, the modern definition was only added to the Webster-Miriam dictionary in 2015. In the traditional sense a meme is a cultural idea, behavior, style that people can't help but want to share because of how funny/amusing/interesting it is.
But in particular MEMESat-1 wants to broadcast from space the new type of meme definition, which is essentially funny or amusing images/GIFs that internet users and especially youth like to modify and share online through social media. Memes have become a major part of internet youth culture, so this could be an excellent way to speak the language of the next generation and get them interested in space, satellites, amateur radio and building satellite ground stations.
At the moment, the team hopes to launch the satellite by late 2021, and no later than Spring 2022. The satellite will be a cubesat with flash memory containing thousands of meme images that will be broadcast to Earth via a transmitter operating in the UHF 70cm radio band. Enthusiasts on the ground will be able to receive the meme images with a Yagi antenna and we anticipate that RTL-SDRs will be a commonly used receiver. The satellite will also contain an FM UHF/VHF repeater operating in the amateur radio band for ham radio use.
I went out and started a nonprofit organization, built a website, developed a meme-related anxiety disorder, and am now building a meme-beaming satellite with a group of undergrads at UGA and some industry sponsors. And it’s all for the sake of making a novel meme. We are now fundraising to launch MEMESat-1.
For those who are interested in reading about the trials and tribulations of a 22 year old man-child trying to send memes into space, I’ve included the longer story below.
For my whole university career, I was in search of different work opportunities and internships to see what felt the most fulfilling and to get some of those sweet sweet resume lines. I’ve interned at a plastic factory, the Air Force Research Labs, NASA JPL, and Ball Aerospace. They were all great places filled with awesome people and cool work, but I didn’t feel connected with my work in a way that fulfilled me. So, for the past 3 years me and my buddies have been joking around about building a satellite that beams down memes from space.
Enter MEMESat-1.
While I was working at JPL, me and some buddies got together to toy around with space start-up ideas. We joked more about MEMESat, and bought the memesat.com domain back in 2018. Due to timing and other life events the start-up idea kind of fell off. One of my pals is pursuing his Ph.D, and the other is working as a spacecraft engineer full-time. I on the other hand, still had 2.5 years of school left.
Work on the MEMESat concept slowly came to a halt by the end of 2018, but picked up again in Spring 2019 when I came up with the acronym the Mission for Education and Multimedia Engagement Satellite (MEMESat-1). I kept telling my classmates and friends about the project idea as a joke, but they thought I was being serious and told me to go for it. By May 2019 I had worked out a deal with some universities to use their space, and began building the website. Over that summer, my job left me some spare time, so I started ramping up the social media for MEMESat-1 by posting daily spacefacts to instagram. I also worked on some preliminary design studies to see if the mission would be feasible, and decided that it definitely was. I also spent the summer researching how to form a company, and what the best company structure would be.
In August 2019, I returned to school and began to work on forming a company. Some great profs at GT gave me the advice to start a nonprofit, so I searched for some pro bono legal advice on starting a nonprofit. I took some of the lawyer’s advice and found some willing Directors for the company, and filed to form a nonprofit corporation - called Let’s Go to Space, Inc.
Around that time, I posted to reddit and got a bunch of attention from you guys, so I figured I should work my hardest to make it happen. I spent months emailing every space related company I could find or even think of. I have much more respect now for people that lead telemarketing campaigns, because it is really hard to convince random people over the phone/email to give you large sums of money. Now, I am happily partnered with Ball Aerospace and sponsored by Blue Canyon Technologies. I’m also in talks with some launch providers about a free launch and some help launching my lesson plans/experiment kits to classrooms all over!
We have passed the point of no return and have nowhere to go but upwards. My parents are confused and slightly disappointed that their rocket scientist son has given up any sort of salary in an effort to appease his ‘internet friends’. God bless you magnificent weirdos for keeping me going. Ad Astra Per Memes.
Currently letsgo2space is fundraising and looking for $30,000 to fund the launch of MEMESAT-1. You can either donate any amount or submit a meme for their broadcast database for $1.69 via their website.
Thank you to Arty Bishop for submitting news about his recently released Android App called Look4Sat. Look4Sat is a satellite tracker and pass predictor with a focus on amateur radio and weather satellites. The app is free, ad free, and open source on GitHub. Arty writes that he's programmed this as a learning exercise and notes:
I always wanted to have an offline and not bloated satellite tracker on my phone, as carrying the laptop at all times is kinda not too handy.
The app uses predict4java library under the hood and is written in Kotlin. The TLE files are from Celestrak and the transmitters info is from SatNOGS and once they are ownloaded the app doesn't need an internet connection.
The app creation and design is hugely inspired by Gpredict which is an absolutely brilliant piece of software. Thank you, Alexandru!
Obviously there is no ads and it's totally free. Hope more people find Look4Sat useful.
The features include:
Calculating satellite passes for up to one week (168 hours)
Calculating passes for the current or manually entered location
Showing the list of currently active and upcoming satellite passes
Showing the active pass progress, polar trajectory and transceivers info
Showing the satellite positional data, footprint and ground track on a map
Offline first: pass prediction is done offline. It's up to you to decide when to update the TLE file and the transceivers DB. (Updates once a week are recommended)
In late December 2019 we posted about Russian weather satellite Meteor M N2-2 which had unfortunately been struck by a micro-meteorite on Dec 18, causing it to lose control and go offline. Meteor M N2 and N2-2 satellites are often monitored with RTL-SDR dongles as it is relatively simple to receive their LRPT signal at 137 MHz which contains a high resolution weather satellite image.
Recently Happysat updated his Meteor M status page, noting that Meteor M N2-2 has been partially recovered, but due to low power it can no longer transmit a 137 MHz LRPT signal ever again. However, the L and X-bands are transmitting while the satellite is in daylight. Happysat writes:
January 2020 There will be only short-term power-ups in the radio visibility zone, and the battery life will be reduced tenfold.
Of particular concern are the batteries they are very quickly overheated and switching from regular to backup.
Unfortunately the power supply features do not allow the 137 MHz transmitter to be used in abnormal power, mode (from solar panels) which is used now although technically it is working fine.
There will be no LRPT Transmission's anymore.
The older Meteor M N2 satellite remains operational transmitting at 137.100 MHz.
UPDATE: It has now been confirmed by Roscosmos that the satellite was struck by what is presumed to be a micrometeorite which caused a leak of thermal transfer gas, and hence a sudden orbit change. It seems unlikely that the satellite will begin operations again as the satellite cannot operate it's camera sensors without thermal cooling. Data is being transmit currently on the X-Band, however, it appears to be a stored image only, rather than live images.
On December 18, 2019, an abnormal situation was recorded on the Meteor-M spacecraft No. 2-2 associated with an external impact (presumably a micrometeorite) on its structure.As a result, he changed the parameters of the orbit and switched to a non-oriented flight mode with high angular velocities.
In accordance with the inherent logic of operation, the device stopped fulfilling the target task and automatically switched to energy-saving mode when the on-board systems that were not involved in ensuring its functioning (including all on-board target equipment) are turned off.
After entering into the zone of Russian ground-based controls with the Meteor-M spacecraft No. 2-2, communication was established and work began to restore its operability: damping angular velocities, transferring to the standard orientation, receiving telemetric and target information.
Currently, work is underway with the satellite under the program of the chief designer.Meteor-M No. 2-2 is in an oriented flight; regular control sessions are conducted with it to receive telemetric information and information from target equipment.
Meteor M N2-2 is a Russian weather satellite that was successfully launched into orbit on July 5 2019. Like with the NOAA and Meteor M N2 satellites, it is possible to receive weather satellite images from this satellite with an RTL-SDR (when it is operational).
The older but still operational Meteor M2 satellite has failed several times in it's history too, each time with the satellite entering an unstable tumble. However, each time the satellite was recovered back into full operation after a few days.
Message from Happysat Meteor M-N 2-2.Around 17/18 Dec lost orientation. Spent two days getting him back unther control again. Succeeded today. Now analysis is stil being carrieout before it becomes operational again. Why it came is still unknown. Thanks Alex.
FossaSat-1 is a recently launched open source "picosatellite" with an onboard LoRa repeater designed for Internet of Things (IoT) communications. It was launched via the Electron Rocket in New Zealand on December 6. At only 5 x 5 x 5cm in size and 250g in weight, a picosatellite is a tiny satellite that fits in your hand and can be affordably built and launched for around US$40k.
Since the launch, it has been confirmed that FossaSat-1 was successfully launched, and is working correctly. However, the antennas have not properly deployed yet resulting in a weak signal that cannot be received by small ground stations. The team are currently working on getting the antenna manually deployed from earth and the latest updates can be found on their Twitter @FossaSys. They note that if the antennas cannot be deployed, then there is still the future launches of FossaSat-1B and FossaSat-2 to look forward to.
While waiting for the antennas to deploy you can watch Andreas Speiss' YouTube video where he explains the satellite in more detail, and shows how to build a FossaSat-1 ground station that can receive the FossaSat-1 LoRa transmission and upload it to the internet. While not SDR-related as it uses a hardware based LoRa chip, this is still an interesting project that some readers may be interested in.
#302 We build a 20 Dollars LoRa Satellite Ground Station and we follow the FossaSat-1 launch
If you've been following our blog over the years, you'll know that we've mentioned the "Outernet" (now known as "Othernet") service a few times. Othernet is a satellite service that wants to provide one way data such as news, weather, audio, books and Wikipedia articles to those in areas with poor, censored or no internet connection. Previous iterations made use of home satellite TV equipment, then L-band (with RTL-SDR receivers) and now the Ku-band with LoRa receivers. Currently it's only available in North America and Europe.
However, thanks to a reader we were recently informed about an interesting and long running Othernet-like service for the Middle East called "Toosheh" (aka Knapsack) which makes use of satellite TV dishes and receivers that are very common in the Middle East. While not specifically related to SDRs, this is an interesting RF related project and situation that we wanted to post about.
After two rough weeks of no internet access at all, finally, we're gaining access again and getting back online slowly. As you may know (if you are following the news) a complete internet shutdown conducted by the I.R. of Iran due to some intense protests across the whole country against the government because of a 200% sudden and unannounced gas price increment. The internet is censored in my country anyhow but this time it was a big one. We only had access to a few domestic websites and NOT even Google services! That was tough!
I know it may be irrelevant to the subject of your blog but it's good for your audience to understand and know the people who have worked hard way before the OUTERNET project to develop a satellite offline broadcast with almost no special devices to receive and use and bring free and uncensored information to the people in Iran.
The major role of the Toosheh project occurred in the Iran 2012 presidential election protests which there were no major broadband internet services all over the country and it a lot to bring daily updates of news and TV programs. The Toosheh is a one-way receive only from the satellite but the tricky part is that Toosheh is not just like a simple satellite data link but it appears as a TV channel in all satellite TV receivers which are very common in Iran, so the blockage of it is hard for the government. However, some trials were arranged by the government back in that time to collect the satellite dishes or jam the signals or mass destruction (!) of the satellite receivers which they currently no longer common in most parts of the country. (at least without unnecessary violence. check out this link: بجستان نیوز » معدوم سازی تجهیزات ماهوارهای در بجستان+عکس(Admin note: Article is in Perisian, use Google Translate to translate Persian to English)
The procedure to use this service is freaking simple. Set your dish to Yahsat and search for the channels on 11766 Mhz. Select the Toosheh channel, plug a flash drive to your receiver and record the blank screen in.TS format using the PVR capability. After several hours of recording unplug your flash drive and connect it to your phone, tablet or laptop. Then open the Toosheh app and you are good to go. Now you have access to dozens of free podcasts, music, books, movies, news, webpages, TV shows and much more that will be updated every single day and if you need something specifically just send them an email. Exactly as same as the OUTERNET but without any special equipment and only with ordinary receivers that are available in almost every home nowadays.
Also if you see their website at toosheh.org and search some other press blogs about Toosheh you can gain more info about the topic.
Toosheh Website Image
We also note that this appears to be the English language version of Toosheh project which provides some more information about coverage and the technology used: https://knapsackforhope.org. Coverage is only available in the middle east.
The tutorial starts by showing you how to set up your Amazon AWS credentials and bucket on the Raspberry Pi, and how to host a simple webpage that can be accessed publicly. The second stage shows how to set up the RTL-SDR drivers and wxtoimg which is used to decode the images. Finally, the third stage shows how to create the automation scripts that automatically schedule a decode, and upload images to the AWS bucket.
Flowgraph for an automated NOAA satellite weather image station.
