The School of Electrical Engingeering and Telecommunications recently put together a YouTube video for BLUEsat, which summarises what we do. Check it out!

In order to certify BLUEsat safe for launch aboard the DNEPR launch vehicle, the satellite needs to undergo vibration and shock testing.

To accurately recreate the conditions that BLUEsat will experience during launch, BLUEsat members Ruiqi Ke and Michael Johnson (pictured) have designed and overseen manufacture of a mock interface that simulates the real manner in which the satellite will be secured to DNEPR’s Space Head Module (SMH).

This new interface will be used to test the vibrational performance of the BLUEsat structure and, importantly, the integrity of the onboard electronics.

Thank you to Mr Andrew Higley from the Workshop at The School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering for manufacturing the interface.

The BLUEsat Project has celebrated its recent progress and achievements by holding a public presentation. 

Our engineers wowed the audience in a wide-ranging talk encompassing a system overview of the satellite, as well as many live demonstrations. Some of the topics covered included the critical systems computer, telemetry to monitor the status of the satellite, the power system architecture, the communications system, BLUEsat's transmit beacon, the hardware and software integration paths to launch, and even the effectiveness of current working culture and management philosophy.

BLUEsat's President, Tony Huang, remarked that "The team worked tirelessly these past two years for this. It's a tremendous demonstration of our capabilities and we can look forward to even greater things in the near future." Here here.

Riding on a wave of significant progress within the BLUEsat Project, we will be demonstrating some of the electronic capabilities of our satellite in a public presentation on Friday 22 July. The presentation, which is open to the public, will run from 2-3pm in room 319 of The School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at UNSW.

The presentation will consist of brief overview talks by our President, CTO, and a number of our engineers regarding various subsystems onboard the satellite. Some of the electronic capabilities of our satellite will be demonstrated throughout. These demonstrations will make use of our "FLATsat", which is a development version of BLUEsat in which the electronics of the satellite have been removed from the multi-layered structural chassis and laid out "flat" in order to develop/test electronic functionality.

If you plan to attend, please email our President Tony Huang so that we can gauge numbers.

BLUEsat's digital radio communications are up and running. Using hardware that will be placed on the satellite, the communications team were able to transmit a compressed image from one computer to another via radio waves. In order to transmit digital data from orbit, BLUEsat will use modems to modulate digital data into an analogue signal. This analogue signal will then be passed via radio transmitters down to Earth. In order to receive data, the reverse process occurs, where the satellite's receivers capture an analogue signal that is then converted into digital data by the modems. This data is then passed into BLUEsat's Critical Systems Computer for analysis. Being able to send a compressed image successfully is a major achievement for the Communications team, consisting of Christian Webb and Mitch Wenke. If there was any more than a small amount of corruption in the transmission, the image would not have been decompressed properly. This success is a great stepping stone in the design of the satellite, providing hardware that can send digital data with the clarity we need over long distances. Congratulations Christian and Mitch!

BLUEsat's morse code beacon has been developed, shouting out "VK2UNS BLUESAT" to the world (VK2UNS is the callsign from BLUEsat's Groundstation) and catching its breath with 7 dits worth of silence between each announcement. Conforming to International Morse Code Standards, the message will be continuously broadcast from our satellite once in space, stopping only when someone requests an interaction with the satellite, at which point the computer will take over and start transmitting the relevant information. A video of the beacon in operation is shown to the right. The 8 leftmost diodes are connected the the outputs of a 4520 8-bit binary counter, which are also fed into an EPROM chips address bus. Each bit of a given address is a single time unit of the Morse code message, so each dit (.) is 1 logic high bit, each dat (-) is 3 high bits, the intersymbol pause is of 1 low bit, the interletter pause is of 3 low bits, and the interword pause is of 7 low bits. The rightmost diode just blinks the output bit so you can see the message as well as hear it through a small connected speaker. Congrats to our beacon team consisting of Daniel Jedrychowski, Samuel Ho, Edward Huang Yifei Huang and Jeff Guan for completing this project. And while we are here, congratulations to the whole team for a very successful 2010. Happy holidays, and we look forward to many more exciting developments next year!

Congratulations to Kahin Yeh and Edmond Chan for completing their year-long BLUEsat theses, and for being awarded Distinctions for their effort. Their projects involved the creation of software that could control BLUEsat's Groundstation hardware, ensuring that our team will be able to monitor and control BLUEsat easily from one of our Groundstation computers. Kahin had the task of creating the software grunt that connected all the different bits and pieces within the Groundstation, whilst Edmond worked hard on getting a friendly user interface up and running. The software has been designed to be operable from a web browser, meaning that any BLUEsat member can monitor the satellite from any location with an internet connection (who knows, we may even make an iPhone app one day!). The software currently has the ability to track not just BLUEsat, but other satellites as well. It is able to control the Groundstation radios and modems, to automatically grab and sort telemetry data from the satellite, to send commands to BLUEsat, and to upload operating system images. Both Kahin and Edmond would like to thanks Dr. Samsung Lim for his support in supervising their theses.

The BLUEsat structure has recently passed launch environment vibration tests with no physical damage. Minor issues with the tie-down rods that hold the trays together were detected; such issues are not expected with our more strenuous flight-version fixture arrangements. The structure easily passed the fundamental frequency requirements in both lateral and longitudinal orientations, ensuring suitability for launch. Testing & Evaluation Team Leader Kate Cussen, shown in the testing photos, recently gained a distinction for her final-year Aerospace Engineering thesis "Testing the BLUEsat Structure for the Launch Environment". She developed a test envelope taking into account the worst mechanical environments from all currently available launch providers and carried out physical testing at Vipac Engineers & Scientists Environmental Test facilities in St. Mary's, Sydney. For this work she also developed a finite element model, which will now be refined to match the experimental results in order to computationally simulate BLUEsat's response to additional environmental stimuli. Congratulations Kate! We also hope your recovery goes well following your camping accident.

BLUEsat Chief Technical Officer for 2010, Thien Nguyen, has been awarded the C Madhusudana Prize for the best academic performance of a 1st year student in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. A keen mechatronics engineering student, Thien joined the BLUEsat Project in the second half of 2009 to pursue his interests beyond the classroom in electrical engineering. He began working on testing and debugging our radio receivers and transmitters, and is enjoying his new role as CTO. "BLUEsat allows me to exercise a practical design based part of my mind beyond what academic coursework currently offers." Congratulations Thien!

BLUEsat relies on solar panels and reserve batteries for electrical energy. These sources provide what we term 'unregulated buses' since they variably supply anywhere between 0-32 Volts. In order for subsystems such as radio receivers or transmitters to function, they require an input that is constant and is lower than the supplied value. These inputs required by different subsystems are known as 'regulated buses', and are currently being worked on by Power Team members George Constantinos and Seynthan Thanapalan. The photos show George working with a 20V unregulated bus from a mains power pack, that would otherwise be supplied by the solar panels or batteries. This 20V is stepped down to 13.68V (as displayed on the multimeter) allowing us to power transmitters. The power pack is also providing 1.4V (logical true) to enable a "Buck Switching Regulator", where 0V (logical false) will switch off the regulator. This value is altered by a micro-controller on board the satellite. Other applications of power regulation include buses of 8V for the radio receivers, 5V for our payload control computer, and 3.3V for BLUEsat's critical systems micro-controller.