Author: Elliot Ogden

Interview with Esme Sudria : How do we create and distribute energy of our rover ?

The solar panels will be folded during the journey, but deployed once the rover lands on Mars in order to supply energy to the space exploration vehicle. The solar panels are key elements of the Exomars rover, which is developed by the European Space Agency and will look for traces of life on the red…
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First complete reception of a CUBESAT in UHF (UVSQ-SAT)

Today, May 07, 2021, we received and fully decoded a transmission from a CUBESAT from Saint Quentin en Yvelines University, whose emission characteristics are close to our future nano satellite OGMS-SA. This is the UVSQ-SAT nanosatellite which was launched at the end of January 2021 and whose description can be found on the site: http://uvsq-sat.projet.latmos.ipsl.fr/…
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A radio club at the ground station of the Space Campus

In order to be able to use our ICOM IC-9100 transceiver to send remote control frames to our future CUBESAT, the head of the ground station, Daniel Kalinowski, teacher and researcher at the IUT of Créteil-Vitry in the GEII department. Holder of an amateur radio license (call sign F4HYX), applied to the National Frequencies Agency…
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Model of the Exomars rover : the drill unit takes shape

Camille Petton and Nathan Menuat, two ICAM students involved in the Rover project of the UPEC Space Campus After six months of work, the integration of the drill unit began thanks to Camille Petton and Nathan Menuat, two engineering students from ICAM in Sénart (France). “We had to use tricks and find techniques to imitate…
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New antenna control system for the Ground Station

Main screen of GPREDICT (the software we use). Until now we have only used GPREDICT prediction software to prepare our listening sessions. Namely: Precise time at which a CUBESAT will pass, the duration of its passage (on average 10 minutes), its position in Azimuth and Elevation in relation to the ground station. Polar diagram, azimuth…
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A conversation with an astronaut

On the 7 of December 2020 between 5:52 p.m. and 6:02 p.m., we were able to record for the first time an Amateur Radio contact between Astronaut Shannon Walker on board of the ISS (Callsign KD5DXB) and Athlone Community College, (in Athlone, Ireland). The communication took place via very high frequency radio wave (VHF) at…
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A CUBESAT simulator at the UPEC Space Campus

The UPEC Space Campus recently acquired a fully functional EyasSat nano satellite simulator. Designed to provide students with the opportunity to understand and explore the concepts of electrical, mechanical, software design as well as a perspective of the systems engineering. To do so they will use the subsystems and functionalities of the spacecraft simulator. The…
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First signal from a CUBSESAT

After the University’s long period of closure caused by COVID-19, we were finally able to resume our activities. For the first time the ground station at the UPEC was able to receive a signal from a CUBESAT. After our first VHF signal received from the ISS in February, we pointed our antennas to smaller satellites…
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Space Campus The international partnership between the UPEC / CPUT in action

At the start of 2020, we had the pleasure of welcoming 3 master students from the CPUT (Cape Peninsula University of Technology) to the UPEC Space Campus. Both Elrich and Rezah worked on our Rosalind Franklin rover project and Ryno worked on the communication between the UPEC ground station and our satellites in orbit. The…
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Update on the ground station

The ground station of the UPEC Space Campus is now equipped to establish VHF/UHF communication with our satellites: A PC with an ICOM transceiver so that we can emit and receive data A PC to do SDR (software-defined radio) reception, to predict and visualize the movements of our targets on a large 65-inch TV. Once…
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