SSETI Express - 2nd Launch Campaign - update

The SSETI Express satellite is still scheduled to launch at 06:52 UTC on Thursday 27th October on board a Kosmos 3M launcher.

The launch team has now reached Moscow and will have boarded the train for Plesetsk yesterday evening for the 18 hour journey. This means that it will probably be late today or Friday morning before we will have moved the satellite out of its protective travel case back onto the pedestal on which it needs to sit for the final tests and checks to be performed.

We expect to have to check all the battery voltages in the cubesats and the T-Pod launchers in addition to SSETI Express's main unit. If required each of these will be topped up before the satellite is integrated onto the launch adaptor early next week.

We will also be checking the pressure in the propulsion system that was charged before the first launch campaign was terminated. Hopefully we will find that this is still at the nominal 300 bar pressure that it was originally charged to.

The software that will be supporting the website that will be available for radio amateurs to submit the telemetry and mission data that they have downloaded is now 95% ready for use and final testing is scheduled for this Friday. We expect to be able to release details of this and to make the
SERACC (sseti express radio amateur communication client) software available during next weekend.

Full details of these events will be available on the Express mission website. This includes full information about the satellite, the ESA sponsored competition,and the plans for its use in the amateur satellite service.
http://sseti.gte.tuwien.ac.at/express/mop/

Reports already received from Plesetsk suggest that it has already started to snow there so we are prepared for an interesting and exciting few days.

A live webstream of the ESA produced TV coverage of the launch is going o be provided by Howard G6LVB at
http://www.streamingwizard.com/clients/space.asx

Exact details of this programme have not yet been announced by ESA but we expect it to commence at approx 06:00 UTC.

More news when it becomes available but please keep those fingers crossed for us!

thanks and 73

Graham
UA/G3VZV

• AMSAT-UK produce a quarterly newsletter "Oscar News" which is full of Amateur Satellite information.
For membership details contact the secretary Jim Heck
Tel: +44 (0)1258 453959
E-mail: g3wgm@amsat.org
Website: http://www.uk.amsat.org/
Online Satellite Pass Predictions:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/tools/predict/

Other recent stories..

Other News Stories

• Get our news headlines for your website - click here
• Submit your news story - click here