Dawson Duckworth KC3NNB, Lauren Hurley KD2RHC, Kaixuan Ji AC3EN and Dr. Alan Johnston KU2Y staffed the AMSAT / Villanova CubeSat Club table at the Robotstock/STEM event in August
Students at the Villanova University College of Engineering started a CubeSat Club in the fall of 2018 and have since got their amateur radio licenses.
The university website reports:
A CubeSat is a nanosatellite—a small, lightweight satellite that is cheaper to build than a conventional satellite. They can be launched from rockets, or occasionally from the International Space Station by astronauts. CubeSats send telemetry information—measurements communicated at remote points by automated processes—over radio signals received on earth by a ground station.
The CubeSat club’s 2018-2019 year was packed with a variety of workshops and projects, including:
• Setting up temporary ground stations called SatNOGS (Satellite Network Operators Group)
• Building Yagi-Uda antennas from tape measurers and scrap wood and using them to track low earth orbit satellites as they flew over Villanova
• Building an AMSAT CubeSat Simulator, a functional satellite model
• Assisting with the freshman CubeSat mini-design projects
• Earning amateur radio licenses and ham radio callsigns
• Assembling and selling electronic transceiver boards used in CubeSats as a fundraiser
• Attending the 2019 Hamvention conference and running the AMSAT education table
• Received and decoded a special message sent from the AO-73 FUNcube Satellite especially for Villanova
Read the full story at
https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/engineering/newsevents/newsarchives/2019/community/CubeSat-Club.html
The students emailed a request to the FUNcube Operations Team to get their special message transmitted from space by the AO-73 satellite. Further information on these ‘Fitter’ messages is available at https://funcube.org.uk/ground-segment/fitter-messages/