The Bylaw revisions adopted by the Board were necessary for saving money, primarily by allowing electronic communications. For example, under the current bylaws, we were required to spend a few thousand dollars to notify the membership of these bylaw changes by mail rather than simply emailing the membership. That will no longer be necessary when they go into effect. The adopted amendments are a culmination of a year-long process of reviewing the existing bylaws by a committee appointed for that purpose. The amendments included a few other changes and clarifications to remove some ambiguities that had arisen over the past several years. I'm not quite sure why a few have latched on to a simple provision designed to protect the organization and all of its members in the rare circumstance that someone applies for membership that would be unsuitable as a member. Hopefully it will never have to be used.
As far as satellite development, perhaps you missed the lead story in last week's ANS (reproduced below). Our engineering team is doing a lot of exciting work.
73,
Paul, N8HM
AMSAT’s GOLF-TEE CubeSat Manifested for Launch on ELaNa-46
AMSAT’s GOLF-TEE CubeSat has been manifested for launch on NASA’s ELaNa-46 mission.
GOLF-TEE is the first satellite in AMSAT’s “Greater Orbit, Larger Footprint” or GOLF program. The goal of the GOLF program is to work by steps through a series of increasingly capable spacecraft to learn to develop systems and skills needed to achieve successful high orbit missions. Among these are active attitude control and the ability to command attitude changes, deployable/steerable solar panels, radiation tolerance for commercial off the shelf (COTS) components in higher orbits, and propulsion. The eventual goal of the GOLF program is a satellite in Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) similar to AO-10, AO-13, and AO-40, but at a currently affordable cost combined with significantly enhanced capabilities, which in turn will allow the use of much less complex ground stations.
The -TEE designation in GOLF-TEE stands for “Technology Exploration Environment” reflecting GOLF-TEE’s mission testing two primary systems needed for higher orbits. First, an Attitude Determination and Control (ADAC) system will be tested to allow active pointing of the satellites antennas, which will have significant gain. The other primary goal of GOLF-TEE is to gain initial orbit and space radiation exposure for radiation event-induced fault tolerant systems designed using COTS components. GOLF-TEE will carry an Integrated Housekeeping Unit (IHU) / command transceiver designed using the Hercules line of ARM architecture-based microcontrollers.
GOLF-TEE will also evaluate a low-cost, deployable, fixed attitude, solar panel array design as part of AMSAT Engineering’s exploration of fixed panel arrays that allow for outfitting a variable number of “wings” in order to best match the power requirements of various CubeSat missions.
Additionally, GOLF-TEE will carry a modified commercial software-defined radio (SDR), the Ettus E310, as an experimental package to test high speed data downlink in the 10 GHz band.
GOLF-TEE will also be a fully-functional LEO VHF/UHF amateur satellite carrying conventional backup systems, including a linear transponder, similar to those flown on AO-109.
A significant amount of funding is necessary to complete the development and construction of the GOLF series of CubeSats. Please consider a donation today. Donations designated for the AMSAT GOLF program may be made at https://www.amsat.org/donations/amsat-golf-program-donations/
[ANS thanks AMSAT Engineering for the above information]
On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 12:50 PM Michael Walker va3mw@portcredit.net wrote:
It would be nice if AMSAT stopped wasting my money playing internal politics and used it for something truly productive for actually making QSO's in the Sky.
Mike va3mw
On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 12:17 PM Ray Soifer via AMSAT-BB amsat-bb@amsat.org wrote:
I agree with Bob McGwier. It fails the smell test.
In addition, as a co-author of the 1989 By-laws, I need to emphasize that the proposed amendment would not be consistent with the Articles of Incorporation.
73 Ray W2RS
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Sent via AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Acceptable Use and Privacy Policies available at https://www.amsat.org/about-amsat/
View archives of this mailing list at https://mailman.amsat.org/hyperkitty/list/amsat-bb@amsat.org To unsubscribe send an email to amsat-bb-leave(a)amsat.org Manage all of your AMSAT-NA mailing list preferences at https://mailman.amsat.org