Update on the P3E Amateur Radio Satellite

At HAM RADIO 2008 AMSAT-DL gave presentations on the P3E and P5A projects.

Thomas Frey HB9SKA has kindly provided a short summary, from the AMSAT-DL Journal, on the current status of the Amateur Radio satellite P3E being built by AMSAT-DL.

It was reported at the AMSAT-DL Symposium 2008 that the mechanical work on P3E has been completed but it doesn't yet have the Internal Housekeeping Unit (IHU). There has been good progress on the transponder payloads with the 435 to 145 MHz software defined linear transponder (SDX) being demonstrated at HAM RADIO 2008 in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

It would appear that the cost quoted by Arianespace for the launch of P3E is outside the budget of AMSAT-DL, however, AMSAT-F has offered its support in any further negotiations.

The possibility of using launch sites operated by India, Russia or Japan is being investigated.

P3E is closely linked to the P5E Mars Orbiter also being built by the Radio Amateurs at AMSAT-DL. This will be the first private venture spacecraft to go to Mars and will use the 2.4 GHz and 10 GHz Amateur Satellite Service frequency allocations.

AMSAT-DL at HAM RADIO 2008
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/june2008/
amsatdl_at_hamradio2008.htm

AMSAT-DL Symposium 2008 translated by Google http://tinyurl.com/5zz7f3

Get into Orbit with AMSAT-DL's P3E-Satellite http://www.p3e-satellite.org/index.pl?lang=en_EN

AMSAT-DL website translated by Google http://tinyurl.com/53nxu5

In German: http://www.amsat-dl.org/

Thomas Frey HB9SKA website translated by Google
http://tinyurl.com/5qfop3

n German: http://home.datacomm.ch/th.frey/