But given that the opportunity is looking for proposals in the field of communications and propulsion, it sounds like a good chance to team up with one of the university groups who are working on miniature Ion engines. They are about 3 inches across and use as little as 36W. A 3U cube could house one of those and you could target orbital transfer and space qualification as the objective. The engine part could be project managed while the comms and structure could be taken on within AMSAT.

Thanks

David

In a message dated 03/02/2012 16:58:34 GMT Standard Time, m5aka@yahoo.co.uk writes:

Some of the orbits are very short lifetime but there are some useful ones there:

DoD (Minotaur I) 350-500 km 40-45° DoD (Minotaur IV)685 km 72° NASA CRS/COTS 300 km 51° EELV 300 x 23,000 km <28° Sun-Synchronous 500 – 1000 km 98°

73 Trevor M5AKA

--- On Fri, 3/2/12, Bill Ress bill@hsmicrowave.com wrote:

From: Bill Ress bill@hsmicrowave.com Subject: [amsat-bb] NASA's Edison Small Satellite Demonstration Program To: amsat-bb@amsat.org Date: Friday, 3 February, 2012, 16:01 See the followwing link.......... http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=2062771302

Regards...Bill - N6GHz _______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb

_______________________________________________ Sent via AMSAT-BB@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb