NEWS:
Welcome! BuzzSat will be meeting
Pizza and drinks will be provided. Please come for a short presentation, and get your questions answered!
Project:
The purpose of Dr. Paul Steffes' senior design section spring semester, 2003, was to build a satellite radio beacon fully capable of being launched into space, operating at 81 GHz under the amateur-satellite service. The project was finished in May 2003 very close to the goal of full flight readiness. Work is continuing now during the summer semester with the goal of testing the crafts flight worthiness with the hopes of finding a launch sometime within the next few years.
The class was structured in four teams and below are their project proposals and final papers. Most of the documents are availble in Adobe PDF format, but due to a bug in Microsoft Word large papers could not be converted, and are available here there original Word format.
The transmitter teams primary responsibility was the testing of the Gunn Diode Oscillator that would become our transmitter along with the associated wave guide and antenna. The power team was repsonsible for finding power and regulating it to three voltages needed aboard the spacecraft. The receiver team built a 440 MHz UHF band receiver to allow the spacecraft to be controlled from an earth station, a requirment of the FCC. The controls team provided both the brains of the earth station control function and the basis for a Atitude Control System (ACS).
The project has been presented to both the The School of ECE Advisory Board and the Georgia Institute of Technology Space Strategic Advisory Group.