SatNOGS Activity Update 2019-08-27

LightSail2 solar-sail deployment

On our previous post we mentioned making a data dashboard based on data retrieved from LightSail2. Among this telemetry data are date stating the status of the solar sail on-obard LightSail2, the Planetary Society shares lots of info about this deployment.

The are lots of information on our wiki on how to create a decoder and how to make a telemetry dashboard while you can always get help from our active community forum. Since we mentioned LightSail2, the Planetary Society on the look-out (literally) for optical verification of its solar-sail deployment so don’t hesitate to look at the night skies.

The Space Library and SatNOGS

If you are following updates from the Libre Space Foundation’s websites work has started on the Space Library, a collaborative project of the Wolbach Library at the Center of Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and & the Libre Space Foundation funded my the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The aim of the Space Library project is to assist new communities participate in satellite missions, engender public engagement in space science, and to fuel new research by improving access to scientific research artifacts and supporting their reuse.

Amongst its sub-projects will be MetaSat & LSTN. MetaSat will develop and prototype an open metadata schema to link data, software, and hardware from small-satellite missions. The schema will be designed with the small-satellite community and piloted on SatNOGS, LSTN (Library Space Technology Network), aims to engage novices, and for them to assess their capacity to use these technologies we are installing SatNOGS on public libraries.

SSTV (slow scan TV) events and automation

During the week of June-to-August Inter MAI and ARISS were transmitting SSTV images from the International Space Station. These images are uploaded on the network in most cases by a custom script but users are already implementing a GNU-radio out-of-tree module to facilitate the automatic decoding of such images in the future.

Dr Lucy Rogers write-up at RS-DesignSpark on building a SatNOGS station

Dr Lucy Rogers has set-up her own SatNOGS ground-station at her back garden inspired by Jo Hinchliffe’s article on a previous issue of Hackspace magazine, and she put together a great write-up on RS-DesignSpark documenting her installation.

Events and talks

Open Source Cubesat Workshop 2019 in Athens, Greece 14-16 October 2019

Contributors of SatNOGS and the greater open space technologies community will join us for this year’s iteration of Open Source Cubesat Workshop 2019 taking place in Athens, Greece hosted by our parent organization Libre Space Foundation.

Registrations are still open, and we will be excited if you join us (registration is free of charge but you have to sign-up in advance). The program includes SatNOGS-specific talks and workshops and several awesome open space technologies that are looking forward to work on.

38th ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference in Detroit, MI United States of America 20-22 September 2019

The ARRL and TAPR Digital Communications Conference is an international forum for radio amateurs to meet, publish their work, and present new ideas and techniques.

This year the four hour long Sunday seminar by Dan White, AD0CQ and Corey Shields, KB9JHU will be titled “Learn to build and operate your own SatNOGS ground station.

The seminar will be hand-on tutorial. Participants will interact with the SatNOGS web services themselves, and discuss other technologies in use such as: Python, GNURadio, InfluxDB, Kaitai Structs, and Grafana. Don’t hesitate to check the event and join them.

Wuthering Bytes in Hebden Bridge United Kingdom 30th August – 8th September 2019

The Wuthering Bytes technology festival, will be opening 30th of August at Hebden Bridge’s Town Hall and our very own Jo Hinchliffe will be talking about Libre Space Foundation’s project including (but not limited to) SatNOGS at 15:30 that very day so feel free to check it out.

SatNOGS rotator spotted in CCCamp 2019 in Mildenberg Zehdenick, Germany

The Chaos Communication Camp is an international, five-day open-air event for hackers and associated life-forms. Some awesome CCCamp goers set-up their on rotator during the event.