SOUTHERN AFRICAN AMATEUR RADIO SATELLITE ASSOCIATION (SA AMSAT)
Registered as a
non-profit organisation by the South African Department of Social
Development
Registration number No 55-363
UPDATED 16 November 2008
SA AMSAT
P O Box 90438
Garsfontein 0042
South Africa
Tel: 012 991 4662
Fax: 012 991 5651
Email:
saamsat@intekom.co.za
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It is official! South Africa’s second satellite, SumbandilaSat, will be launched from the Russian Baikonur Cosmodrome in the December to March time frame.
Baikonur Cosmodrome is the launch
complex where Sputnik 1, Earth's first artificial satellite, was
launched.
All space station flights using Russian launch vehicles are launched
from Baikonur. Baikonur is also the only Russian launch site capable of
launching the Proton launch vehicle, which was used for Zarya, the first
element launch of the space station.
The name Baikonur is misleading. The former Soviet Union used the name
and coordinates of a small mining town, Baikonur, to describe the
location of its rocket complex. In fact, the launch complex is about 322
kilometres southwest of the mining town near Tyuratam in Kazakhstan.
This misrepresentation was done intentionally to hide the actual
location of the launch complex. Although the true location is now known,
the launch complex is still referred to as Baikonur.
SumbandilaSat was first scheduled for launch on a Sthil rocket from a Russian submarine but due to political issues between various departments in Russia the plan was aborted and DST began a search for a new launch opportunity. Some concerted behind the scenes diplomatic resulted in the Russian agreeing to honour the contract and shift the launch to Baikonur.
SumbandilaSat has been unpacked and is undergoing testing at SunSpace in Stellenbosch before it will be shipped to Russia for integration with the launch vehicle. Engineers at the launch site are preparing a special adapter ring to accommodate the Sumbandila structure on the rocket.
BACAR LAUNCH DATE TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON
As soon as the balloon supply problem has been sorted out, a launch date will be announced.
BACAR FUND
Make a donation to the BACAR fund. Send a cheque to SA AMSAT at P O Box
90438, Garsfontein 0042 or do an electronic transfer to SA AMSAT, ABSA
Menlyn Acc 560 153 171
Branch code 335 645. Your contribution will go to developing payloads and
operating and launch costs
MORE ABOUT BACAR
BACAR is the acronym for Balloon Carrying Amateur Radio. The activity
involved sending up a balloon with an Amateur Radio payload involving a
large number of enthusiasts from a launch team, a recovery team to
individual radio amateurs tracking the signals from their QTH and
reporting in to a mapping team. Read more
Read the BACAR story in the February Edition of EngineerIT online at www.eepublishers.co.za.
JOIN SA AMSAT NOW
SA
AMSAT has introduced a new email newsletter that will arrive in your
inbox on a regular basis, monthly or more often if there is important
news. It is optimised for email and will not gobble up your bandwidth.
Download the July newsletter
to see for yourself.
Members also receive a membership certificate upon joining. If you are already a member and have not received a certificate please send your details to saamsat@intekom.co.za and a certificate will be mailed to you.
To join, get all the details here
SA AMSAT MAILS UP TWO EMAIL NEWSLETTERS A MONTH RIGHT INTO YOUR MAILBOX. SEND AN EMAIL FOR A SAMPLE
SATELLITES FOR BEGINNERS WITH
DAVE LONG ZS5FR
Download the PowerPoint Presentation here in PDF
Download article in word here
Download audio presentation here
MAJOR VHF DXPEDITION
PLANNED FOR JANUARY
Watch for updates on 20 November
A
major VHF DXpedition to Namibia that will include operation on a number
of VHF bands and modes is in the final planning stages. The team will be
led by HB9CRQ, one of Europe's top EME operators and will include
moonbounce operation on 50, 144, 432 and 1296 MHz.
January is also one of the peak months for Tropospheric ducting
propagation in the South Atlantic ocean and experienced tropo operators
including Glenn, ZS2GK and Dave, N7BHC will be making a serious attempt
to complete the first ever 144 MHz contact spanning the Atlantic Ocean.
Glenn was recently at one end of a 2m contact with FR5DN on Reunion
Island, a distance of just short of 3000 Kilometres and Dave, a native
of Port Elizabeth, runs a 144 MHz beacon from the east coast of the U.S.
beamed towards Europe.
Satellite operation is also planned and even using the low
earth-orbiting satellites the location should give good coverage
including all of Africa and much of the eastern portion of South
America.
The group will assemble in Pretoria on January 5th and will leave early
the following morning for the drive to Luderitz where the station will
be put into operation on arrival. The last day of operation is expected
to be on the 16 January
For more details call Pine ZS6OB at 082 611 9238
The Sun’s magnetic field blamed for is fiery behaviour
The Sun’s magnetic field can be blamed for it fiery behaviour, Prof Dr
Sami Solanki, Solar Physicist and Managing Director of the Max Planck
Institute for Solar System Research said when he delivered the annual
Bernard Price Memorial lecture.
The Bernard Price Memorial Lecture is a joint meeting between the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers and the University of the Witwatersrand. This annual lecture is named after the late Dr Bernard Price who made a great contribution to the power supply industry in South Africa.
The sun is our closest star, yet a star of which we know very little. Situated in the centre of our solar system the other planets revolve around this extremely hot, giant ball of burning gas. In his lecture entitled “Exploring our fiery star - the Sun”, Prof Solanki said that the sun is a restless star. It shows a wide variety of transients or active phenomena such as dark sunspots, the continuous changing corona, energetic flares and immense coronal mass ejections, together with the associated output of energetic radiation and particles. All these phenomena are influenced by the sun’s erratic and often turbulent magnetic field.”
“The structure of the sun’s magnetic field is horribly complex and very unlike that of the earth which has a bipolar structure. Even during solar minimum the sun’s magnetic structure is complex. One could call it a mega pole structure with smaller and larger loops.
For researches the smaller loops going in and out the core surface are a problem. “At this stage we cannot go down to the lower scales and that is why we are building instruments in an effort to get better resolution.”
“Allmost all the phenomena observed on the sun are caused by the magnetic field,” he said. “The fact that the sun has a solar wind, the fact that it has a coronal and the fact there are flares and sunspots, is because of the magnetic field.
“The sun’s influence on the earth is also, at least at human time scales, driven by the magnetic field. In the very long term there is the evolution in its core making the sun grow and getting brighter with time. This in turn is influencing the earth’s climate. There are also structure term changes which as far as we know are produced by the magnetic field These could be flares sending in energetic radiation or coronal mass ejections sending energetic or charged particles towards earth taking the magnetic field with it.”
“These fields interact with the magnetic field of the earth and changes the magneto sphere causing reconnection of magnetic field lines in the magneto sphere which then send particles to the northern latitudes which produce beautiful things like auroras and less beautiful things like burning out large transformers creating power black outs and damage to spacecraft.”
“In the shorter term the sun fluctuates in brightness which we believe is due to the magnetic field All the evidence we have gathered over the past 30 years shows that over the eleven year solar cycle the sun get a little brighter and less bright by about 0,1 %. It does not sound very much but we do actually see correlations in the eleven year weather cycle.
Currently there are several space missions that study the sun and have already provided the scientific world with greater insight in what drives this fiery star. Mew missions are in the planning stage.
The Max Planck Institute, which has existed since 1957 under the name Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy, has seen a number of transformations in its lifetime. During the 50's and 60's, the scientific emphasis was on the exploration of the Earth's upper atmosphere, but in the following decades this was extended to include new areas involving the solar system. The current thrust of research now concentrates on the exploration of the Sun, Heliosphere, planets, and comets, that is, on all the essential parts of the solar system. In order to more accurately reflect the Institute's current activities, the Institute changed the name, since 1st July 2004, to "Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research".
“We want to expand to study Helios seismology, looking into the interior of the sun using its waves. The sun very conveniently provides us with 10 million different sound waves at any given time. The outer part of the sun is very turbulent. The sound waves are propagating all over the place, One can start building up a picture what is going on inside the sun, New techniques have been developed that allow us to follow individual waves and build three dimensional pictures. By peering inside the sun to determine what is going on inside the core we expect to be able to improve predictions of solar outburst and space weather in general.
The
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research has an interesting
website.
Visit http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/institut/
BACAR launch delayed
Due to a balloon supply problem the launch of BACAR has been delayed. Please visit this page regularly for updates on the new launch date.
Click here for an update on
BACAR
FULL STORY ON SUMBANDILASAT AND THE AMATEUR PAYLOAD CLICK HERE