Asteriod Mission into Deep Space Amateur Sat

[K7MT]

Asteroid Mission into Deep Space

ZCZC AS05
QST de W1AW
Space Bulletin 005 ARLS005
From ARRL Headquarters
Newington, CT September 2, 2014
To all radio amateurs

SB SPACE ARL ARLS005
ARLS005 Amateur Radio Transponder Will Accompany Japanese Asteroid Mission into Deep Space

According to a news report, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
(JAXA) Hayabusa 2 asteroid mission, now scheduled to launch in December, will carry the Abyss 2 (Shin'en 2) Amateur Radio satellite. A 17 kg, 50 cm diameter polyhedron, Shin'en 2, built by students at Kyushu Institute of Technology, makes extensive use of carbon-fiber reinforced plastic materials that can be bonded by heat to reduce its weight and the number of hardware fasteners. In addition to a Mode J linear transponder for Amateur Radio communication, Shin'en 2 will include CW and WSJT beacons. The inclusion of the transponder will offer an opportunity for earthbound radio amateurs to test the limits of their communication capabilities.

"For confirming the operational status of the spacecraft in deep space, the know-how of the Moon-reflecting communication technology can be applied. By using an Amateur Radio service transponder, amateur stations can communicate with each other when the spacecraft is in near-Moon orbit," a project outline on the Shin'en 2 website explains. "Beyond this distance, signal detection by Morse code and telemetry data transmitted from the spacecraft will be performed."
The project is expected to help pave the way for future lunar rover missions. The outline is on the web at, http://kit-okuyama-lab.com/en/sinen2/sinen2-outline/ .

Hayabusa 2 will make a round trip to the C-type asteroid 1999 JU3, arriving at the asteroid in mid-2018. It then would survey and take samples of the asteroid before departing in December 2019, and return to Earth in December 2020.

Shin'en 2 will be placed into an elliptical orbit around the Sun and travel into a deep space between Venus and Mars. Its inclination will be almost zero, which means Shin-En2 will stay in the Earth's equatorial plane. The distance from the Sun will be between 0.7 and
1.3 AU (an astronomical unit is 149,597,871 km).

The IARU-coordinated frequencies for Shin'en 2 are: CW beacon,
437.505 MHz; WSJT telemetry, 437.385 MHz; Inverting SSB/CW transponder, 145.940-145.960 MHz uplink (LSB)/435.280-435.260 MHz downlink (USB). The project also is hoping to gather listener reports.

The ARTSAT2:DESPATCH satellite will be on the same launch. The satellite, a joint project by students at Tama Art University and Tokyo University, will carry a 30 kg "deep space sculpture"
developed using a 3D printer, as well as an Amateur Radio payload, a CW beacon in the 435 MHz band.

At its maximum operational distance, it will be some 3 million km
(1.86 million miles) from Earth about a week after launch.
NNNN
/EX

[K7MT]

Howdy gang - well the artsat at 7 watts is finally is out of range for my small 70cm 9 element antenna with 15db lo noise pre-amp. I lost it at about 1 million kilometers when the CW signal faded at my station. I coped the CW telemetry for about 7 days before I lost the signal. I recorded the signal then copied in order to get a perfect copy. The satellite is about 3 million kilometers out there in route to the Asteroid where the main satellite is planning on landing, taking a sample, and bringing it back to earth. Pretty cool.

My station was to small to get a good copy of the second satellite digital transmission at less then 1 watt..

It was fun and I now know a cw 7 watt signal does reach out about 900,000 kilometers.. HHHM at 300,000 KM per second it took about 3 seconds for the signal to reach my station. I was copying cw in the past !!!! i would have loved to had the equipment to copy it out to 3 million km.

The Mode J Transponder did not make the trip but have not yet read why.. Mode J is 2 meters SSB/CW up line and 70CM SSB/CW downlink so about 8 stations could be on at the same time.

Cheers all and Happy Holidaze !!!!!!

Bill K7MT