Hi,

There may be part of the YES2 / MASS project still operating, please read the following. Any help would be appreciated.

73

Dave G4DPZ

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Helping track YES2 Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:08:21 +0200 From: Roger.Walker@esa.int To: Neil.Melville@esa.int CC: Age-Raymond.Riise@esa.int, A.R.Bonnema@isispace.nl, david.johnson@blackpepper.co.uk, Fabio.De.Pascale@esa.int, gb4fun@rsgb.org.uk, g.shirville@btinternet.com, howard@howardlong.com, kk@karlos.dk, kresten@control.aau.dk, "Ubbels, W-J." W.J.Ubbels@tudelft.nl, fabio@fabiolinux.com

Neil,

The YES2 project very much appreciates the efforts of the GENSO community in its attempts to search for and track MASS. We estimate that the battery life would allow for about 10 hours of continuous telemetry transmission, so by now we can assume that MASS is no longer functioning.

HOWEVER, the Fotino capsule should also be broadcasting data in orbit for the next 4-5 days, so the YES2 project would like to request the assistance of the GENSO community to search for and track Fotino.

We estimate the Fotino orbit to be similar to Foton-M3 but with a lower perigee altitude of 230 km. Hence, we expect Fotino to be ahead of Foton-M3 in the ground track due to the slightly increased orbital period. Rough estimations are for Fotino to advance ahead of Foton-M3 by about 1 minute per orbit since capsule release on 07:22 Zulu today.

Fotino should be transmitting data bursts of 312 bits (lasting 35 milliseconds) every 5 seconds at a frequency of 437 MHz (frequency separation 26 kHz). Every data burst starts with a sync word EB 90 (hex) and looks something like:

EB 90 XX XX XX C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX RR RR where XX bytes are not constant and the 2 last bytes (RR) the CRC checksum of the previous 296 bits of data.

Data encoding is FSK, Manchester code.

Any help from GENSO in finding Fotino would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

Roger.

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Dr. Roger Walker Project Manager (YES2, ESEO and ESMO) Acting Head of Education Projects Activities Unit (LEX-EP) Education Office, European Space Agency Telephone: +31(0)71 565 3349 - Fax: +31(0)71 565 5590 ESTEC, Keplerlaan 1 - 2201 AZ Noordwijk - The Netherlands

Neil

Melville/estec/ESA

To 25/09/2007 17:49 A.R.Bonnema@isispace.nl,

david.johnson@blackpepper.co.uk, gb4fun@rsgb.org.uk,

g.shirville@btinternet.com,

kk@karlos.dk,

kresten@control.aau.dk, "Ubbels, W-J." W.J.Ubbels@tudelft.nl,

howard@howardlong.com

cc Roger Walker/estec/ESA@ESA, Fabio De Pascale/estec/ESA@ESA, Age-Raymond Riise/esoc/ESA@ESA

Subject Re: Helping track YES2(Document

link: Roger Walker)

Hi again everybody,

Ok, I think that no-one heard anything on this pass. So perhaps the battery is already dead, or the tether drag has moved the orbit enough to confuse us. By the next pass the battery will almost certainly be depleted, so I think there is little point in any of you tracking it further.

Thank you very much for your help on this. I know that the project team appreciate it.

You can track the further status of YES2 on the ESA website: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMBBBC1S6F_index_0.html And also on the project website: http://www.yes2.info/

Kresten, thanks for being so quick off the mark.

Abe and Wouter, reliable as ever - you'd started before I even called...

Carlos, a star, thanks. I'm well aware that I still owe you presentation material - I haven't been in ESTEC for more than 5 mins since the colloquium, but I will be soon.

Howard, Dave and Graham, sorry for disturbing you when you have other pressing non-ham related things to attend to.

It was anyway a nice demonstration of the GENSO community and what we can do. I will send management a mail to that effect. I think >=3 stations with an hours notice is pretty good! If only it were all automated already...

Many thanks again to all for trying.

Cheers,

Neil

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