The EAGLE satellite

Over the past weekend I was privileged to attend the second EAGLE planning meeting.

First - the EAGLE project is very much alive and progressing quite well. Granted, I had some concerns going into the meetings, but these were quickly put to rest. The project has excellent leadership, excellent technical expertise, a great deal of actual satellite experience and a wonderful 'get it done' attitude from all the teams.

The open design and development concept for EAGLE should be quite informative to those of us outside the design team. We will have a great opportunity to learn more about what goes into making the decisions about the spacecraft, its orbit and its operational modes. In addition, we all now assume the responsibility to make this the best thought out, documented and tested amateur satellite ever.

So, following in the age old AMSAT tradition of volunteering to fill a need, I have volunteered to help communicate what is going on with the EAGLE project. This a short introduction to many updates coming over the next months and years as the AMSAT-NA EAGLE satellite project matures into an
orbiting satellite. I am planning on releasing a report at least once a month and more often when important information becomes available. This report will be available through the AMSAT BB and on the EAGLE website.

There already is so much to write about that I am going to have to break it down into different areas on each report, because I won't have time to write about all the areas in each report. There are many separate, parallel efforts going on during this early stage. As these separate projects
mature, the integration and coordination of these modules into the EAGLE satellite should prove to be a fascinating journey.

One of the items discussed was the 2006 EAGLE budget. As you can see from the EAGLE project thermometer on the AMSAT EAGLE site, $33k won't go very far. It is time to start purchasing items for development and EAGLE needs your support both as a volunteer and as a donor. You can do both of these on the AMSAT web site http://www.amsat.org/

I am interested in some people to help me take the raw technical information provided by the project teams and put this into a more digestible format. Let me know if you are interested.

Expect my first report before too long.

73,
Gould, WA4SXM
Email: gouldsmi <at> bellsouth.net

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