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www.southgatearc.org
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Global Educational Network for Satellite OperationsAn ESA Assessment Study for this project began in June 2006 and a large number of the study team attended the AMSAT-UK 2006 Colloquium as part of the SSETI contingent. AMSAT-UK representatives were invited to attend their break-out meeting by Neil Mellville of ESA. In the meeting, AMSAT-UK received a briefing on the purpose of GENSO, which is to provide a global infrastructure that will be available for future educational satellite projects. By increasing communication time from an average of 3% to a potential 60%, it will become possible to access spacecraft data in real time at low cost. As a result of this, AMSAT-UK joined with ESA, the SSETI Association, UNISEC, and several universities around the world, to determine the technical feasibility of the project and define a comprehensive set of technical requirements with suggested design solutions. A month later, the first workshop was held at the University of Tokyo to discuss the proposal and the potential for inter-continental collaboration. The response from the amateur radio and academic communities was particularly promising. The implementation plan produced at the second workshop, held in ESTEC
in late September, included work packages, a preliminary schedule and
a budget framework. On 5 October, this plan was presented to the International
Space The Board gave the go-ahead to start the design and implementation of the software and hardware, with objective of running a pilot phase in around a years time. They are planning a workshop next February to discuss our progress and the core features should be ready for testing by mid-2007. If all goes according to plan, they hope to have the network fully operational from November 2008 onwards. Over the coming months, ESA will provide funding for software development
and overall project management, with the other space agencies on the board,
CSA, JAXA and NASA, sponsoring involvement from Canada, Japan and the
USA “One of the key aspects of this project will be that the network is developed ‘by students for students’, with the technical support and guidance of the space agencies and the radio amateur community,” said Neil Melville of ESA. AMSAT-UK has been asked to define the typical ground station in terms of hardware and to provide supporting software. Therefore, watch out for a questionnaire appearing on AMSAT-BB for your thoughts. The data collection and ground station software, developed as part of the project will be made available to the AMSAT community. More information can be found at:
ESA & AMSAT-UK
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