About Us » History

BLUEsat is currently a Student Project managed and run entirely by students at The University of New South Wales (UNSW).

November 1997 - An Idea
In November 1997 a group of undergraduate students at UNSW, set up a chapter of the National Space Society of Australia (NSSA), called the UNSW Space Frontier Society (UNSW-SFS).

UNSW-SFS had quite a few members who wanted to be involved in practical space projects. One member, Daniel Faber, had been searching casually for ideas for a few months. The new society provided a focus for his quest, and the very next night he found the "Y-Prize website".

The X-prize, in which US$10m was won by the first group in the world which built a fully reusable 2-man spacecraft to go into orbit and back twice in ten days, provided the idea for the more modest Y-Prize. The Y-Prize offered $500 for a amateur Australian group to build a satellite and get it into space. All that was needed was solar power and 2-way communications.

Daniel brought it up in the next SFS meeting as a possible project. Before he could ask for alternative suggestions, the idea had already been accepted!

Early 1998 - A Name
The primitive group of satellite builders decided they needed a design, a team and a name. Eventually, BLUEsat (Basic LEO UNSW Experimental Satellite) was chosen.

1998 - Research
The newly christened BLUEsat project then went into a research phase, intended to last six months. Basic questions were asked here, such as "What is a satellite anyway?" and "How do they get up there?". We were space enthusiasts, not yet spacecraft engineers or scientists, so we had a lot to learn.

It was not easy to find information, as no satellites have been built in Australia for about thirty years. Very slowly the body of knowledge grew, through great effort by those involved.

July 1998 - Our First Funding
By July we has a much better idea of what we were trying to build. It would be a box, probably a cube shape, less than 30cm on the side. We had preferences on the payloads, and some rough performance characteristics sketched out for the bus.

With some images and power point slides ready, we decided to announce ourselves to the outside world. The presentation at the 5th Australian Space Development Conference, generously organised by the NSSA, was a great success, and was followed up by funding proposals to various groups. Jonathan Ingles and Sarah Eccles made a marketing breakthrough, securing $10,000 from the UNSW U-committee and $2,000 from Nescafe Big Break. Our great thanks to those sponsors since these were important psychological as well as financial contributions.

Second half of 1998 - A Team
The project was now a serious undertaking, and it was realised that an organisational structure was required. Till this time all decisions had been made democratically by the entire group. Although this was entertaining and let everyone have their say, progress was a little slow. The first project manager, Daniel Faber, was chosen by the UNSW-SFS executive, and Andrew Wong was chosen as the Technical Manager.

A recruitment campaign was initiated, and BLUEsat managers recruited all types, with concentrated efforts on engineering and commerce students. Students from any year of undergraduate study were welcomed, especially those in first year who could learn and contribute the most over the following years in the team. This paid off, and recruitment drives have been a feature of the project ever since.

1999 - A Design
Management of the technical side of the project in 1999 was split into two teams, electrical and mechanical. Hiroaki Endo, who had just completed a review of stabilisation systems, took the lead in the mechanical team. Robert Tot, who proceeded to write the "BLUESAT Briefing Booklet", began to build an electrical team.

It took us a year to find the AMSAT-NA Microsat design which was kindly supplied by the Australian Space Research Institute, who got them originally from AMSAT-NA. Many many thanks to ASRI, AMSAT-NA, Dick Jannson and the other designers for these. The Mechanical Team, made up of first through fourth year mechanical engineering students, worked early morning for all of the latter half of the year to re-draw the designs into Pro/Engineer, a 3D CAD program.

The Electrical team suffered from a lack of electrical engineers in 1999, though some new recruits began learning and planning for the design phase. An overall plan of the power and radio systems was worked out, and the ground station radios commissioned for terrestrial use.

The Project Rolls On
Daniel Faber retired from the position of Project Manager in November 1999 to conduct industrial training through the the co-op program. Over the Summer of 1999/2000, Robert Tot fomulated the first ever Project Timelines for the BLUEsat Project. This was an important and fundamental step defining how BLUEsat functioned, turning it from a amateur collaboration to a professional student engineering project.

The next steps were to crystallise BLUEsat's status. In order to gain University of New South Wales funding and acceptance as a affiliated Student Engineering Project, Robert Tot approached the Engineering Faculty. Robert secured the first annual funding from the two major schools of engineering, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. This was negoiated as $5,000 per Annum, which solidified BLUEsat's position as a UNSW Student Engineering Project.

Robert also determined a suitable location for the BLUEsat Groundstation from which the satellite would be controlled. The location was EE419, a disused RF Shielded Room which served as the University Club's wine cellar. With help from the School of Electrical Engineering , EE419 was refurbished for BLUEsat's use.

2000 - The End Of The Beginning
Through 2000, feasibility studies continued by BLUEsat to the point where a preliminary design could be selected. This design centred around a modified AMSAT tray structure. At the same time, a number of theses were carried out in subsystem areas, beginning to define exactly what would be carried on board the satellite. The other outcome of the feasibility studies was the identification of a sun-synchronous orbit as a preferred orbit for BLUEsat.

In addition to the engineering, it was recognised that launch of the satellite would require much more than just a completed, space-grade satellite. To that end the "Business Development Team" was formed in 2000. Its goals were closely aligned with what is today the Operations team, that is, they looked at sponsorship, finances, insurance and a host of other non-engineering matters.

2001 - Design in Earnest
2001 saw significant progress in many of the subsystems. For example, the initial design of the solar panels was completed, and the materials for their construction purchased. With the emphasis on photo-voltaic engineering at UNSW BLUEsat believed it was possible that the solar panels for the satellite could be produced completely in-house. Whilst this did not turn out to be the case the process was a very valuable learning experience.

In 2001 there was also a change in the leadership of the project. Daniel Ng and Darran Siu came into the executive to join Hiroaki Endo, bringing new zest and enthusiasm to the project direction.

Antennae were installed on the roof of Electrical Engineering to enable us to track the satellite and others like it. Work on the flight computer was outsourced to the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW, and the prototype of the structure was completed.

Aside from engineering, progress was made in the management of the project, with the Steering Committee formed to oversee BLUEsat progress. The Steering Committee consisted of representatives from industry and academia with expertise in one or more of the set of skills necessary to see a successful launch of the satellite. · BLUEsat increased its emphasis on training programmes, running a soldering workshop with renowned satellite builder Chuck Green of AMSAT, and international connections were broadened as BLUEsat hosted international visitors from IEAust and the Ukraine as well as hosting the Honeywell Summer School.

2002 - Design Continues
In 2002 solar panel construction was completed, however great difficulty was encountered in the lamination process. When encapsulating the cells in glass, the glass thickness had to be very thick in order to not crack when pressure was applied in order to remove the air from between the cells. The likely launch cost increase from using such thick glass was greater than the cost of buying solar panels with a very thin encapsulant applied at the time of production.

2002 also saw Flight Computer development brought back under the control of BLUEsat. The specifications were finalised at the end of 2002. The mechanical team produced BLUEsat's first real documentation in their engineering drawings of the structure.

The operations team organised BLUEsat attendance at a conference run by the CRC for Satellite Systems in Australia and the DNEPR microsatellite conference in Kazakhstan. In this year Kitty Lo was President, assisted by Darran who continued as Electrical Systems Manager and Peter Matthison as Mechanical Systems Manager.

2003 - Moving to manufacture
Darran took over the presidency in 2003, with Peter Matthison continuing as Mechanical Systems Manager.

2003 saw two new subsystems begin to unfold. Radios produced their first prototype hardware for the satellite, and the coding of a bootloader began the on - board software development. Specifications for the power system were also completed.

In the same year the groundstation was officially opened, and the cleanroom built and opened. These resources meant we had safe places to store completed satellite hardware. BLUEsat also received its first cash donation in 2003 of $10,000. BLUEsat continued to publicise our aims by exhibiting at CeBIT and Hamfest for the first time in 2003.

2004 - Some redesign begins
In 2004 it became apparent that some components of the structure needed redesign to accommodate some unexpected changes in design. This redesign cycle is a feature of our exploratory approach to satellite building, and allows us to learn a great deal, though unfortunately it slows the production of a final satellite! BLUEsat also ordered the encapsulated Gallium Arsenide cells from Spectrolabs and solar redesign began.

Our first prototype flight computer was manufactured and JTAG boards completed this year. The first revision of the power system design was also completed. Richard Clarke was President, which represented an important broadening of the project - Richard was a History major in Arts, bringing a new perspective to a position hitherto dominated by engineering students. Darran moved to Electrical Systems and Pete continued as Mechanical Systems Leader.

Numbers were becoming a problem, however. The original members of the project had finished their degrees and were off surviving in the real world. The number of active members was below ten, and so a series of poster campaigns and introductory seminars were launched towards the end of the year. The usual overwhelming response to our posters (about fifty people) moderated after a few weeks to produce about ten people who stuck with the project.

2005
With the new members that had joined, this still wasn't enough. So a major recruitment drive was planned for midsession. This was quite successful. 50-70 people arrived over the next few weeks showing interest. Of this, 15 or so stayed with the project. Some of the new members recruited in the past few years had moved into leadership: Charles Wong was President and Vader (Vaenthan Thiruvarudchelvan) Chief Technical officer. Again there was some breadth in the executive as Anthony Wicht (B Eng (civil) / B Laws) took on the role of Chief Operations Officer.

BLUEsat looked promising again.

The flight computer design had a major setback with the departure of Ashley, thus causing Vader to alter his thesis, because one can't really write the Operating System without the hardware. Many many long hours were put in, but finally, v2.0 of the flight computer was born. The design was sent off and the wait was on. Most of the population of the board was outsourced, leaving only the ram for us to finish off. In the process of bringing the FC to life, 1 board was unfortunately rendered unusable. But soon after, it was alive. Amrad (the development machine) was setup and development was in progress.

Charles started working on the OS through NICTA while Josh worked on the bootloader. The bootloader was burnt and combined with the FC, making it now standalone. It just needed legs. In the background, the software team had been working on groundstation control of the satelite. A basic design of this was interlinked with the FC.

The solar team were using the old silicon cells to make some practice panels. The process both honed skills for making the Gallium Arsenide cells and built useful panels for linking to FLATsat. This meant that the power team could work with all the vagaries of solar power when testing their battery charge functions.

Medhi, Maggie, Jon and Umair (the power team) spent most of the year routing and refining the power board. Chris Walsh started off the FPGA team who were designing and testing the three FPGAs which needed to be linked to the satellite.

BLUEsat also started to look at the legal implications of launch this year and began to raise our profile within the university.

	Author: Chris Walsh © The Author, the BLUEsat project or UNSW. All rights reserved. Last Modified: April 30 2006 17:29:12.