Hi All,
On Feb18th I visited 4 Labs at UC Boulder as a part of Lockheed-Martin's Engineering Explorer Post program (www.engpost.org) that meets every other Tuesday evening from September to May each year. I am sponsoring two young men without fathers as members of this Post. What was interesting to me and potentially other AMSAT members was that they are getting ready to launch a satellite named DANDE that will transmit in the 430 MHz Amateur Radio band using a "modified AX.25" packet radio protocol for the beacon and data. In the control room I saw the TS-2000 they are using for communications. The control room and all other activites for this satellite are located in the Colorado Space Grant Labs on the University of Colorado's Bolder Campus in the Discovery Learning Center. It is my understanding that a launch of this satellite could be as early as next month (March) as the hardware is now through testing and being prepared for launch on an experimental Orbital-Science vehicle. I was told that the orbit would be very elliptical and that the DANDE was designed for low earth orbit, but this orbit will take it through the Van Allen belts, so the DANDE could have a more limited life as a result.
For more info on DANDE I recommend the following sites:
http://dande.colorado.edu/files/DANDE_AGU_POSTER.PNG
http://dande.colorado.edu/files/pilinski_CEDAR_poster_2008_v4pr2.pdf
http://spacegrant.colorado.edu
http://spacegrant.colorado.edu/boulderstudents/boulderprojects/dande
http://www.ofcm.gov/nswp-sp/pdf/NSWP-SP-1995-scan.pdf
http://spacegrant.colorado.edu/dande-mission
Ron, W9KFB AMSAT LM-0185 Greenwood Village, CO