Our Kind of Contest: "Eight Pins, One Shot!"

Jeri Ellsworth has come up with a contest that will appeal to SolderSmoke fans: A design competition using 555 timers. Check it out:
http://www.555contest.com/

NASA NANO-Sail Found by Hams!

All is well with the Nano-sail spacecraft, and hams apparently helped find it:

“This is tremendous news and the first time NASA has deployed a solar sail in low-Earth orbit,” said Dean Alhorn, NanoSail-D principal investigator. “To get to this point is an incredible accomplishment for our small team and I can’t thank the amateur ham operator community enough for their help in tracking NanoSail-D. Their assistance was invaluable. In particular, the Marshall Amateur Radio Club was the very first to hear the radio beacon. It was exciting!”

The Marshall Amateur Radio Club confirmed deployment of NanoSail-D late Wednesay EST with reception of the 1200bps AX.25 FM beacon on 437.275MHz +/-10kHz Doppler. News Release: 19 January 2011 Huntsville, AL USA The Marshall Amateur Radio Club (@ MSFC) - WA4NZD late Wednesday afternoon confirmed ejection of the NanoSail-D sub-satellite. This loaf-of-bread sized spacecraft was carried to orbit late last year on an Air Force rocket as part of NASA's FastSat project. This is the first successful deployment of a satellite, launched from a satellite already in orbit .!. The only communication from the NanoSail-D vehicle is via ham radio with 1200 baud FM AX25 beacon packets. The WA4NZD team of N4PMF and WB5RMG, was listening on 437.275 MHz FM with the NanoSail-D Principal Investigator Dean Alhorn at the club station when the beacon was heard and susbequently decoded onto the screen. Please visit http://wa4nzd.wordpress.com/ for pictures and more links to the NanoSail-D project. They are asking for telemetry reception reports from all over the world to help fill in gaps. The battery is expected to last for only three days. Marshall Amateur Radio Club http://wa4nzd.wordpress.com/ NanoSail-D Dashboard http://nanosaild.engr.scu.edu/dashboard.htm NanoSail-D on Twitter http://twitter.com/NanoSailD

Voyager -- Still on the air after 33 years

The Baltimore Sun has a really nice article on the Voyager spacecraft, and on the guys who have been keeping them going for the past 33 years. Here's an excerpt:

You probably have more computing power in your pocket than what NASA's venerable Voyager spacecraft are carrying to the edge of the solar system. They have working memories a million times smaller than your home computer. They record their scientific data on 8-track tape machines. And they communicate with their aging human inventors back home with a 23-watt whisper. Even so, the twin explorers, now 33 years into their mission, continue to explore new territory as far as 11 billion miles from Earth. And they still make global news. Scientists announced last month that Voyager 1 had outrun the solar wind, the first man-made object to reach the doorstep to interstellar space.
Here's the link to the article:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-voyager-20110117,0,278380,full.story

NASA Needs Our Help!

Kim Newton
256-544-0034
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
Kimberly.D.Newton@nasa.gov

01.19.11

 

RELEASE
:
11-009

 

 

NanoSail-D Ejects: NASA Seeks Amateur Radio Operators' Aid to Listen for Beacon Signal

 

 

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Wednesday, Jan. 19 at 11:30 a.m. EST, engineers at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., confirmed that the NanoSail-D nanosatellite ejected from Fast Affordable Scientific and Technology Satellite, FASTSAT. The ejection event occurred spontaneously and was identified this morning when engineers at the center analyzed onboard FASTSAT telemetry. The ejection of NanoSail-D also has been confirmed by ground-based satellite tracking assets.

Amateur ham operators are asked to listen for the signal to verify NanoSail-D is operating. This information should be sent to the NanoSail-D dashboard at: http://nanosaild.engr.scu.edu/dashboard.htm. The NanoSail-D beacon signal can be found at 437.270 MHz.

The NanoSail-D science team is hopeful the nanosatellite is healthy and can complete its solar sail mission. After ejection, a timer within NanoSail-D begins a three-day countdown as the satellite orbits the Earth. Once the timer reaches zero, four booms will quickly deploy and the NanoSail-D sail will start to unfold to a 100-square-foot polymer sail. Within five seconds the sail fully unfurls.

"This is great news for our team. We’re anxious to hear the beacon which tells us that NanoSail-D is healthy and operating as planned," said Dean Alhorn, NanoSail-D principal investigator and aerospace engineer at the Marshall Center. "The science team is hopeful to see that NanoSail-D is operational and will be able to unfurl its solar sail."

On Dec. 6,, 2010, NASA triggered the planned ejection of NanoSail-D from FASTSAT. At that time, the team confirmed that the door successfully opened and data indicated a successful ejection. Upon further analysis, no evidence of NanoSail-D was identified in low-Earth orbit, leading the team to believe NanoSail-D remained inside FASTSAT.

The FASTSAT mission has continued to operate as planned with the five other scientific experiments operating nominally.

"We knew that the door opened and it was possible that NanoSail-D could eject on its own," said Mark Boudreaux, FASTSAT project manager at the Marshall Center. "What a pleasant surprise this morning when our flight operations team confirmed that NanoSail-D is now a free flyer."

If the deployment is successful, NanoSail-D will stay in low-Earth orbit between 70 and 120 days, depending on atmospheric conditions. NanoSail-D is designed to demonstrate deployment of a compact solar sail boom system that could lead to further development of this alternative solar sail propulsion technology and FASTSAT’s ability to eject a nano-satellite from a micro-satellite -- while avoiding re-contact with the FASTSAT satellite bus.

Follow the NanoSail-D mission operation on Twitter at:

http://twitter.com/nanosaild

For additional information on the timeline of the NanoSail-D deployment visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/501204main_NSD2_timeline_sequence.pdf

To learn more about FASTSAT and the NanoSail-D missions visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats

 

- end -

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text-only version of this release

 

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Rouges Gallery: Three Possible SolderSmoke mics

One of my New Year's resolutions was to finally, seriously pay some attention to the audio quality of the SolderSmoke podcast. With its roots in the scratchy Echolink connections between Juneau and London, audio quality has long been neglected on our show. With some funds donated by kind listeners (thanks guys!) I was this weekend shopping the internet for a suitable SolderMic. I ran into a lot of audio-fool snake oil. Wait a second, I thought, let's do some checks on the many mics I have around me here in the shack. I made comparison tests using three different mics (pictured above): my venerable D-104 chrome lollipop (with a transistor amplifier in the base), the dilapidated computer mic with improvised pop shield that I've been using for the last several years, and a Turner +2 mic that I gutted a while back (the original element was replaced by a cheap Radio Shack electret element, and the on-board amplifier was disconnected). (NOTE: It is a MYTH -- an ugly myth -- that the D-104 is CB gear. We debunked this hideous lie a while back. The D-104 is definitely ham gear! The Turner +2? Well, I don't know about that one. It does look a bit good-buddyish.)

At first, I thought the re-done Turner would win out. Then I thought the computer mic would keep its job. But then -- surprisingly -- the D-104 started to sound REAL good. The D-104 was especially good at keeping AC hum out of the signal -- that was a problem with the other two.

I found that I could get a very nice-sounding audio by running the D-104 audio through some EQ to knock down the little bit of hum that it did pick up, and to put about 30 db of attenuation on my now infamous SSSS whistles. I also used Audacity's noise remover.

So, the next SolderSmoke may come to you via an Astatic D-104. Kind of appropriate, don't you think? What do you guys think? Maybe I should post an audio sample to get some expert opinion before I chrome lollipop #130...

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What should I do with this thing?

Pretty cool, don't you think? I found this among the stuff that arrived from storage. I must have bought it at a hamfest sometime in the distant past. Note the miniature TUBES. Note the place of manufacture: BEAVERTON, OREGON. The internal construction is beautiful, with good shielding between each stage. It has a nice AC power supply. I have no real need for a 2 meter converter... So, what should I do with this? It seems to have the potential to become a QRP transmitter. Or maybe a DC receiver? Or maybe I should just turn it over to AA1TJ for conversion into something really surprising and marvelous.

Einstein and Lead-Acid Batteries

In "SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" we discuss the way in which Einstein's Special Relativity explains how and why transformers and coils work. I thought it was very cool to be able to see the role of Einstein's theory in our little toroidal transformers. Yesterday The New Scientist (perhaps the best science weekly in the world) brought news that we need to consider relativistic effects if we want to understand how and why our car batteries (and, I suppose, our gel-cells) work:

Thank relativity every time your car starts. Lead-acid batteries get about 80 per cent of their voltage from special relativistic effects.

Check it out (the NS story is short and gets right to the point): http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19978-car-batteries-run-on-relativity.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

Some Tech Humor

Ron Barrett

Apparently Pluto's demotion from planet status might have been a bit unfair. Researchers say that the rival to Pluto that was discovered six years ago is actually smaller than Pluto.

And I thought this BBC skit on computer problems would yield a few chuckles from the SolderSmoke community. (For U.S. readers: Orange is a big ISP/mobile phone provider in the UK and elsewhere.):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

Grote Reber, Radio Astronomy, and Tasmania

Wow, the website of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a real treasure trove, with lots of ham radio info. Check out their page about ham radio's contribution to the exploration of the universe: http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/hist_ham.shtml

The picture above shows antenna that Grote Reber built in his backyard in Wheaton, Illinois in 1937. It is now on display at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia. That's quite an antenna! Imagine the neighbors' reaction.

NRAO has a page devoted to Grote Reber:
http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/hist_reber.shtml
I had wondered what had drawn him to Tasmania later in life. Here's the answer:

In the 1950s, Reber sought a field that seemed neglected by most other researchers and turned his attention to cosmic radio waves at very low frequencies (1-2 MHz, or wavelength 150-300 meters). Waves of these frequencies cannot penetrate the Earth's ionosphere except in certain parts of the Earth at times of low solar activity. One such place is Tasmania, where Reber lived for many years. He died in Tasmania on December 20, 2002.