ESA’s CubeSats ready for flight

The first students' CubeSats to be sponsored by ESA’s Education Office have passed their Final Acceptance Review and have been declared ready for launch on board the maiden flight of Vega, the new ESA launcher. The launch window for this historic lift-off opens on 26 January and ends in the first week of February 2012.

The seven university-built picosatellites, each weighing only 1 kilogram, were integrated with the devices that will carry them during launch – the P-PODs, or Poly-Picosatellite Orbital Deployers – between late October and mid November. Before they could be cleared for launch, they had to pass a detailed technical examination known as the Final Acceptance Review.

READ MORE @ EAS- Education website


Sourse SGARC

TinySDR

TinySDR by LY1GP It's a very simple direct conversion receiver consisting of nothing more than three parts:

1) Simple LC band pass filter;
2) Mixer; and
3) VFO.

No AF amplifier stage, it just feeds the output direct to the sound card MIC input and leaves it to do the amplification etc. Oh, and the VFO is coupled into the mixer via a phase transformer thereby providing two different phases - one at 0 degrees and one at 90 degrees - and thereby making the output that of (I believe) an IQ SDR receiver.
My 1st version work very nice ,It need more work at VFO.
tnx VK1IS for the webblog .



See a Clip at youtube

CubeSats

Up to nine CubeSats built by European Universities will be flown during the debut of Europe's new Vega launch vehicle at the beginning of 2012. Together they represent a diverse range of designs and a variety of miniaturised technologies and sensors.

Up to nine CubeSats will be accommodated in three P-POD deployment systems which are to be mounted on the LARES primary payload. Each 1 kg CubeSat will be deployed into a high inclination, low Earth orbit, and is expected to operate in orbit for up to four years using a small ground station based at its respective university.
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