[amsat-bb] Mission to the planets

To demonstrate solar power and the distances to the planets, our students used a mock planetary explorer consisting of a solar panel on a satellite model on a cart:

http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/EPSplanets.html

They backed the cart away over 590 feet from a 1000W spot lamp to get from Mercury to Jupiter. A KPC-3+ TNC provided APRS telemetry to a laptop which plotted the IV curve of the solar panel along the way (which was down 1000 to 1 by the time they got to Saturn (the size of a BB)... Pluto was in the next building.

Anyway, students had fun. And we got some nice photos. I compressed them in PAINT and they are under 40k and load pretty fast.

Just an example of how we use Ham radio in the classroom.

Bob, WB4APR