By: PROSSATeam

“Space weather? That’s our mission!”

A.K.A. KNOWLEDGE

ARDUINO - KICKSAT -ARDUSAT

INTRODUCTION

• As researchers, we are constantly updating our ideas and our projects.

• As part of our job we have been searching for new technologies that can help us complete our mission: space weather research.

• In order to study the space weather we have searched for different equipment and instruments that can provide important data to our research. Some of these are: Arduino, KickSat and ArduSat

SPACE WEATHER?

It is the concept of changing environmental conditions in near-between sun and earth space. It is the description of changes in the ambient plasma, magnetic fields, radiation, and other matter in space caused by the sun.

ARDUINO

OUR WORK WITH ARDUINO

• We put to work the temperature and humidity sensors.

• We create a graphic of the humility data.

HUMIDITY SENSOR DATA

ARDUINO DATA TRANSFER

• EasyTransfer arduino-library

• Arduino Sending

• Arduino Receiving

• Serial Port

• TX Transfer pin

• RX Receiver pin

ARDUSAT

WHAT THE ARDUSAT WILL USE TO WORK?

h ttp ://www.geeetech .c om/blog /wp -c on ten t/up lo ads /2012 /06 /Ardu sa t_2 .j pg

Some of the primary equipment onboard the satellite will include Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Camera, Geiger Counter, Infrared Thermometer, Light Sensor, Magnetometer, Spectrometer, Sun Sensors (Photodiodes) and Temperature Sensors.

WHY AN ARDUSAT?

• ArduSats are based on CubeSats, but CubeSats alone are still fairly expensive

—a few hundred grand. ArduSats are cheaper satellites and more accessible

that can be created by students or anyone interested in building a satellite.

CAN WE USE AN ARDUSAT TO STUDY SPACE WEATHER?

• Yes, the ardusat satellite has many sensors but the sensors that are used for the ArduSat satellite depend on what are your expecting to analyze in your investigation.

• Also some CubeSats have been send to study Space Weather, like the RAX satellite and the RAX II.

• Since the ArduSat is a modificated CubeSat it can be modified to study the Space Weather.

WHAT SENSORS WE CAN USE?

• Special Sensor Auroral Particle Sensor

• Special Sensor Ion & Electron Sensor

• Special Sensor Magnetometer

• Special Sensor Ultraviolet Limb Imager

• Special Sensor Ultra-violet Spectrographic Imager

KICKSAT

SPACECRAFT “SPRITE”

UPDATING OUR KICKSAT KNOWLEDGE

“The project”

• When?

• Who’s idea?

• Who funded it?

• Why?

• The launch

• Antenas – is a V-shaped half wave dipole with a 50 ohm impedance

• Microcontroler – is a Texas Instrument MSP430, which is an ultra-low power 16-bit RISC mixed-signal microprocessors.

• Transceiver – is a UHF (437 MHz) transceiver capable of transmitting at a maximum power of 10 milliwatts.

SPACECRAFT “SPRITE” HARDWARE

SPACECRAFT “SPRITE” HARDWARE

• Magnetometer and Gyroscope – Vector sensors. Combining the information of both sensors, the sprite attitude determination can be calculated.

• Solar Cells - TASC are made from the offcuts of larger square and octagonal solar cells.

SPACECRAFT “SPRITE” COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

Radio:• Signals from Sprites are being received using a Yagi antenna

with an additional 23 decibels of attenuation between the antenna and the LNA.

• Each Sprite is assigned a unique Gold Code

• The frequencies assigned to the KickSat mission.

• 437.240 MHz – Sprites

• 2.4 GHz – KickSat

SPACECRAFT “SPRITE” COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

Ground Station:

• Individuals and groups are encouraged to have their own.

• Ground Stations will be based on GNU Radio

• FUNcube Dongle antennas can be used

SPACECRAFT “SPRITE” SOFTWARE

IN-PROCESS/FUTURE WORK

• Installation and development of the different programming codes for each satellite project

• Green House hardware design and creation

• PROSSATeam Network Pages updates

• Banner Printing

• ArduSat modifications for space weather research

• Arduino microcontrollers communication programming

WEB PROMOTION

• Gmail – prossat.nasa@gmail.com

• Facebook Page –

https://www.facebook.com/pages/PROSSATeam/207996689351464?ref=hl#

• Twitter Account – https://twitter.com/PROSSATeam

• Slide Share Page – http://www.slideshare.net/PROSSATeamNASA

• Tumblr. Blog – http://prossat.tumblr.com

TO BE CONTINUED…