BLUEsat has made the front page of the School of Computer Science and Engineering's Beta Newsletter. The feature article briefly discusses the history and motivation behind our satellite project, calling on enthusiastic students in mechanical engineering, computer science/engineering and electrical engineering to get involved! If you are interested in joining us, please contact our President Chris Walsh.

A copy of the Beta newsletter can be downloaded from here.

The 10th Australian Space Development Conference is being held from July 21 to 23 at the Adelaide Hilton in South Australia. The ASDC attracts national and international speakers to discuss recent developments in the space industry in Australia and overseas. Government, industry and research institutions come together to share knowledge, network and develop plans to take the Australian space industry forward. Domestic speakers include Senator Annette Hurley, chair of the Senate Space Inquiry, Brett Biddington from Cisco Systems and Professor John Zillman from the Global Climate Observing System. Some of the international companies sending speakers are Intelsat, Orbital Sciences Corporation, United Launch Alliance, COM DEV, Thales Alenia Space and Arianespace.

This year, a former BLUEsat executive member, Anthony Wicht, is co-chairing the conference. A strong national space industry helps groups like BLUEsat by developing a network of companies and individuals who can assist us, and giving our team work opportunities when they graduate. If you are involved with the space industry in Australia or overseas, you should consider attending and we look forward to seeing you there. More information is available at the ASDC website.

With the help of Geoff Whittle from Whittle Tool & Die Pty Ltd in Melbourne, a number of accurately machined rods have been delivered to BLUEsat.

The rods are made from a nickel-iron alloy and possess a high magnetic permeability. This "magnetically soft" characteristic means that, when it is passed through a varying magnetic field, it will undergo hysteresis, dissipating the energy into heat. Such properties make the material very useful for passive attitude stabilisation of a microsatellite such as BLUEsat, where the material can be used in combination with permanent magnets to stabilise the satellite in it's orbit about the Earth. In this way, the magnets try to align the satellite to the Earth's magnetic field, and the hysteresis rods dissipate, or dampen, any oscillations about these field lines. Control over the rate at which the satellite spins on it's own axis can also be controlled using this material.

Ironically, such magnetically soft material is very hard, requiring the use of cutting techniques such as electric discharge machining. Thank you to Geoff Whittle for his expertise in carrying out this type of machining to make our rods.

In April 2008, BLUEsat made a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics regarding their Inquiry into The Current State of Australia's Space Science & Industry Sector. In this, BLUEsat has drawn on its experiences as a volunteer student satellite project to suggest ways that the Government could encourage the growth of space activity within Australia, through both academia and industry.

Our submission has now been made public by the Committee. A PDF of this can be downloaded from here.

More information about the Inquiry, along with links to the 59 other submissions, can be found here: http://www.aph.gov.au/SENATE/committee/economics_ctte/space_08/index.htm.

BLUEsat was again presented as an exciting student project at the engineering faculty at this year's UNSW Open Day (a.k.a Courses and Careers Day).

All of our members who were part of the Open Day thoroughly enjoyed talking to potential students about university life, student projects especially BLUEsat as well as many other interesting subjects. We thank all who took the time to chat with us and attend our lab tours, and all the staff from the faculty for their kind help in making it a success.

BLUEsat will again play a key role during this year's Courses and Careers Day (a.k.a Open Day). We will be giving a tour of our cleanroom and we will also have a stall at the School of Electrical Engineering area. Come and check us out!

Details of UNSW Courses and Careers day are:

• Date: Saturday, 1st September 2007
  
• Venue: UNSW Kensington Campus
  
• Duration: 10am - 4pm
  

Several members of BLUEsat paid a visit to Form 4 of Pittwater House Primary School at Collaroy on the Northern Beaches. There they gave a presentation on the BLUEsat project, satellites and space technology to the class of 10 year olds. We also took along various pieces of equipment to show the students, including a prototype solar panel, two versions of the flight computer and part of the satellite structure which gave the students the chance to actually get their hands on some space technology.

Form 4 had been studying space all term, asking lots of questions and demonstrating a fairly impressive knowledge of the history of space flight and some of the difficulties involved in launching a satellite into orbit. We hope that BLUEsat will help inspire some of them to grow up to be the next generation of engineers and scientists.

BLUEsat will again be featured in this year's CeBIT exhibitions. We hope you see you all there.

We thank the generous support of Hannover Fairs Australia. for making this possible

The BLUEsat project at UNSW has become the first educational body appoved under the Space Licensing Act. This entitles us to heavily discounted licence fees when we launch, and brings us one step closer to obtaining all necessary authorisations before launch, regardless of where in the world that ends up being!

We understand that the approval was the first educational approval ever granted under the Space Licensing Act, and the application process was an interesting one for both the Space Licensing Office and for BLUEsat. More information about the office can be found here http://www.industry.gov.au/content/itrinternet/cmscontent.cfm?objectID=D6FB638A-C19A-4F23-823829A97D5B1557.

As a part of a sponsorship agreement with Machinery Forum (NSW), a set of ERSA soldering irons was kindly donated to BLUEsat.

These soldering irons are a vital addition to the engineering equipment we currently have at BLUEsat and will help substantially in the manufacture of our circuit boards. As can be seen in the photo, they have already been put to good use.

We thank the generous support of Machinery Forum (NSW) and look forward to further involvement with them.

Through December the solar team have been building a further solar panel using the flight-grade solar cells supplied by Spectralabs. The cells have been soldered together by Bryan Clarke in the BLUEsat cleanroom, and preliminary testing has been undertaken under the cleanroom lighting. The soldering quality has improved significantly because of the CDSCC soldering course (see below). This January the solar team will test the panel under AM1.5 light (ground-level sunlight) which will allow us to improve our estimate of the power budget for the satellite.