Thanks to Ron @W6RZ for first posting the AMSAT-UK presentation video on QRZ Sat forum today. IMO this is quite encouraging and exciting news. Apparently despite persistent naysayers to the contrary there are some open minded, optimistic, and competent radio amateurs in positions of influence that are making progress with this idea. As an American it ought to be agitating that visible leadership for this comes from elsewhere. I especially appreciated the first slide that outlines innovations radio amateurs have contributed to the art of satellite communications. Hope you enjoy watching and reading more about it. 73, John, WØPV ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY GEO SATELLITE OPPORTUNITY At the recent RSGB Convention / AMSAT-UK Colloquium at Milton Keynes, Frank Zeppenfeldt, PD0AP, from the European Space Agency Satellite Communications Group, made a presentation on the subject of a future ESA backed amateur satellite mission to GEO. Frank has obtained funding of 250,000 Euro to investigate the possibility of an Amateur satellite or payload to be placed in GEO orbit. The presentation emphasises innovation and microwave communications. Franks full presentation is available on YouTube and here at the AMSAT-DL colloquium: As a member of the UK microwave / Satellite community, we would like to invite you to contribute to the design concept of this mission. We would welcome any thoughts you may have via e-mail etc and we will add those to the overall discussion. In a follow up Teams meeting on Wed 1st Nov between Frank and AMSAT-UK, it became clear that an ideal solution from an ESA perspective should provide a service to amateurs in Canada as well as Europe. - Canada is an ESA co-operating state. Note that any GEO covering part or all of Canada will also cover a significant proportion of The USA. AMSAT-UK is working to identify a suitable range of GEO slots which meet this requirement. What is needed, is a proposal for 2 or 3 ideas for what this GEO mission (most likely a hosted payload) should include. See notes / Franks presentation. AMSAT-UK aims to respond with some proposals by Dec 4th. These do not need great detail, but should justify bands used and other ideas. For Example. What bands should be included. - This project is not aimed as a QO-100 replacement. Is 24G and up practical? Can a ground station generate enough power economically with today's available technology for an uplink on 24/47/76G Given a resource in space, is there an 'easy' entry level on say 24G - RX or TX so we can attract new microwave operators. Should the transponder/s be old style bent pipe configurations or contain on board processing to decode RX signals then encode the downlink? What digital protocols are appropriate for the above? Is 5.6G viable as an uplink given the WiFi presence? Any observations on 6cm interference would be valuable. Note: The antennas on the satellite will likely have a min gain of 20dB as this covers the visible portion of the Earth from geostationary orbit. In recent discussions with BATC etc we have concluded that a 10G downlink should be the baseline to take advantage of the large existing userbase and that a minimum power output onboard needs to be 10W into a 20dB antenna. If the proposals are considered substantial enough for further discussion, we have suggested a meeting at the ESA technical centre in The Netherlands around end Feb / March next year. This 2 day (?) event would be funded by ESA probably via A-UK. If this meeting happens, then representatives from A-UK BATC and UK microwave group could attend along with other groups from The EU and USA so we can take the project forward. Frank anticipates doing some initial prototyping and then present the findings to a meeting of GEO platform operators next year. Hopefully this will find a commercial partner with a platform going to an appropriate GEO slot. If any of this is of interest, please let us know your thoughts. This is a rare opportunity. I hope you can give it your support. Regards David G0MRF / Noel G8GTZ Comment Nov 19th 2023 - We would like to engage in this conversation and will contact David G0MRF and others since we just incorporated AMSAT-CA (Amateur Radio Satellites and Systems - Canada). More news on this to follow soon !!!!! - VE4SW
$272K+ to "investigate" a "possibility" of a MW based hamsat? Oy! IMO, this is less than a fiber optic 'server' in the sky. The 'microwave' part seems to be the sticking point for many folks I have talked with over the years. It's OK. Not a member of AMSAT and doubt I ever would bother to join..... After dealing with/supporting commercial GEO operations, I don't it would be any 'fun' for me.
Very excited about the prospect! mmWave is exciting, and makes a lot of sense for a geostationary satellite link. If this becomes a reality, the and footprint covers the entire California, I pledge here and now to donate $2K to the cause. AB6RF
Thanks for posting the footprints, I was interested in that. But am not too concerned about the compromise, as it appears to be part of the plan to include "inter-satellite links", which could include QO-100 and others, which would expand the effective GEO footprint. See the slide from the Frank PD0AP presentation (starts @8:00 min into it) Be aware that not all "AMSAT's are the same. AMSAT-UK and especially AMSAT-DL are far more stable, bold, forward thinking & acting. Very worthy of funding. AMSAT-USA is IMO a troubled org. Government IP constraints in the USA haven't helped, but the internal strife & financial ambiguities have been unbearable. But see their latest news bulletin excerpt below regarding the OP. Not holding my breath for anything very exciting; glad to see an AMSAT-CANADA group being stood up & involved. DATE 2023 DEC 03 Update on AMSAT's Participation in ESA Geostationary Project Following the recent AMSAT Symposium where David Bowman, G0MRF, presented information on the ESA Geostationary payload investigation, an offer was extended to AMSAT (USA) to participate with AMSAT-UK in developing a proposal for submittal to ESA. AMSAT Director and Vice President - Operations Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, volunteered on short notice to represent AMSAT in these initial discussions. An additional Canadian AMSAT representative is desired and welcome to participate in future meetings and discussions. After a meeting on November 26th, an initial proposal to ESA was being finalized for submittal on December 4th. More information will be forthcoming soon.
An update on this was published in ANS this weekend: Proposal Submitted to ESA for Geostationary Microwave Amateur Payload A proposal has been submitted to the European Space Agency (ESA) by AMSAT-UK, the British Amateur Television Club (BATC), and AMSAT-NA, with input from members of the UK Microwave Group for a geostationary microwave amateur payload with planned coverage of at least part of North America. This proposal was submitted in response to a presentation at the AMSAT-UK Colloquium from Frank Zeppenfeldt, PD0AP, of ESA, who has secured €250,000 in funding to investigate the possibility of an amateur satellite or payload in geostationary orbit. The proposal notes the desire for coverage of all ESA member and cooperating states, but that it is not possible for a satellite in geostationary orbit to cover the entirety of this territory, which ranges from Cyprus at approximately 34 degrees east to western Canada at approximately 141 degrees west and lays out example coverage from three slots: 5 degrees west, 30 degrees west, and 47 degrees west. In a later section, the proposal also discusses two non-geostationary orbit options that could provide the desired coverage: a tundra orbit and a high earth orbit just below the geostationary belt. The amateur radio and educational payload proposed consists of two 5.6 GHz uplink and 10 GHz downlink transponders (Mode C/x) - one 250 kHz wide with 20 watts of output for narrowband modes such as SSB, CW, and narrowband digital mdoes and one 1 MHz wide with 20 watts of output for wideband modes, including amateur television. The transponder design would include an optional SDR block for signal regeneration. Additionally, a 24 GHz receiver would also function as a transponder uplink. The proposal also calls for a 47 or 74 GHz multimode beacon or additional downlink transmitter, an earth-pointing camera with a still image downlink as part of the telemetry or beacon for educational outreach, and a red or near-infrared laser experiment aimed towards Western Europe. All downlink signals would be phase coherent with timing by GPS reference or a chip-scale atomic clock. The full proposal text can be found at https://www.amsat.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ESA-GEO-proposal-AMSAT-UK.pdf [ANS thanks AMSAT-UK, the British Amateur Television Club (BATC), AMSAT-NA, and the UK Microwave Group for the above information]
Actually there should a plan for two more GEOs like QO 100 spaced at 120 degrees to each other and some way of interlinking all the three together, like the communication satellite networks covering the entire globe. I see a lot activity on QO 100 in my region, both on analogue and digital modes. We have a regular morning India World Wide Net as well, on QO 100. Only if there is global coverage will the system be good for the Amateur Radio community at large. May be you could loop in ISRO and NASA along with ESA, for a global co-operative venture, something like what happened at the time of construction of International Space Station. Even now, the best 'LEO satellite' which even a beginner can access is the Amateur Radio on International Space Station! 73 de VU2JO
I was an AMSAT member about 25 years ago. This was in the heady days of Phase 3D. As John, W0PV points out above, from my casual outsider's view, AMSAT-NA has had a number of issues. I give them full credit for being enthusiastic supporters of ham radio and amateur satellites, but it appears to me that without a major shakeup and a very bold, ambitious leader coming in, it will remain a small (1 employee!) niche organization which occasionally builds a microsat and gets it into orbit: which is something that many schools around the world (even some high schools) have done. What's needed is a major cash infusion from an angel benefactor (where's Jeff Bezos when you need him?) so that AMSAT-NA can have some full time people lobbying the satcom industry to donate some of the real-estate on their birds to support ham-band transponders for educational and emergency communications purposes, such as QO-100 managed to do thanks to the generosity of Eshailsat in Qatar. This is a proven technique (a lot of the Soviet/Russian amsats were piggybacking on a non-amateur satellite) that opens up a lot of possibilities that would not be doable with the limitations of smallsats. As VU2JO points out, then you can start to talk about linking satellites together for worldwide communications, or even building bigger dedicated amateur satellite for the day (hopefully soon) when reusable rockets can get a 1000kg payload to orbit for an amount of money that could be crowdfunded. And the selling point to the satcom industry should be that they would be supporting the development of the next generation of satellite and space engineers. However, looking at the last 25 years, I don't see AMSAT-NA doing that. If it happens, it will be thanks to AMSAT-DL or even AMSAT-China.
Thanks a lot Jim for quoting my suggestion! In this context I wish to inform you that a student project satellite (BeliefSat-0) with FM transponder and digipeater, piggybacked on EXPOSAT, has been launched by ISRO on 1 January 2024. @N2YO (https://www.n2yo.com/satellite/?s=58694#results) has classified it as 'Geostationary', though it is at a LEO altitude, possibly because it has an equatorial orbit. Checked SatNOGS, (https://network.satnogs.org/observations/?norad=58694), no reported activity till the 68th orbit. I am planning to try to hear for the U/V transponder at the 5.54 IST pass coming here soon. 73 de, Jon, VU2JO
