Bath TOPCAT Project

TOPCAT (TOPside ionosphere Computer Assisted Tomography) is a payload being developed at the University of Bath that will be launched on the UK’s first 3U CubeSat, UKube-1, next year. The TOPCAT payload will consist of a specialised dual-frequency GPS receiver...

ARISSat-1 BPSK Reception Challenge

ARISSat-1 was deployed from the ISS on August 3. It has a composite VHF downlink that will easily fit into the FUNcube Dongle (FCD) receive spectrum. The 145.920 MHz telemetry is 1000 bps BPSK and can, of course, also be received with a normal SSB 2 metre receiver....

ARISSat-1 battery eclipse voltage decreasing

The ARISSat-1 Battery voltage is decreasing each eclipse period. It therefore is taking longer for the Battery to charge up to 32.5V to allow the switch from Low Power to High Power when the satellite enters an illumination period. Kenneth Ransom, N5VHO has plotted...

ARISSat-1 Low Duty Cycle Mode

The new Amateur Radio satellite ARISSat-1 has been switching into low duty cycle mode even while in full sun which has suprised observers. When the satellite is in darkness, in order to conserve battery power, it switches into a low duty cycle mode (also known as low...

FUNcube Dongle as a Radio Telescope?

A Radio Astronomy paper describes the use of theĀ AMSAT-UK FUNcube Dongle Software Defined Radio as part of a Radio Telescope. In the paper Dr David Morgan of the British Astronomical Association Radio Astronomy Group (BAA-RAG) describes how he used the FUNcube Dongle...