This note is informational and not for publication. The official announcement will come from Rick Hambly on behalf of AMSAT and be made in the form of a press release. Let me say that I consider these happenings to be a serious beginning of the activities towards a real spacecraft. I want to apologize for my being a wee bit quiet in the last few weeks but there have been nice things brewing.
A few weeks ago, Bob Davis, KF4KSS, and I had a conversation about his future in business and his future with us. Bob was an AMSAT employee in the labs in Orlando during the integration of AO-40. Many credit Bob with doing some of the best work done in the mechanical area during that program. Bob was a aerospace engineering student and AMSAT made a great move hiring him. Dick Jansson, Lou McFadin, Jan King, Karl Meinzer, and more were/ are universally supportive of Bob and his abilities as a spacecraft mechanical engineer.
After the AO-40 program "went to bed" and into orbit, the Orlando activity wound down. Bob wound up at SpaceDev and was an important part of the Chipsat program. He eventually left SpaceDev as their fortunes changed (which had nothing to do with the spectacularly successful Chipsat) and became an employee of Swales, a well known aerospace firm in the D.C., Maryland,Va. area. Bob and his peers became successful and landed a good support contract with Wallops-NASA. Eventually, they decided to leave Swales and join the University and the Maryland Hawk corportation and to become an important partner to the university, Wallops, and now AMSAT.
When it became clear to me the scope of their ambition, and many other factors, but most importantly, having Bob Davis involved, I recommended to Rick that we consider this as our new facility.
Rick Hambly, Tom Clark, Jim Sanford, Bob Davis and I have been working with the University of Maryland on the eastern shore and this spin off of the university called Maryland Hawk Corporation with the goal being to enter into a working relationship that we hope will last for years. Maryland Hawk operates the Hawk Institute for Space Sciences in Pocomoke, Maryland. HISS has access to the spacecraft engineering facilities at Hawk and at Wallops (including machine shop, thermal vacuum chamber, and shake/shock test apparatus). The University of Maryland branch affiliated with HISS is in Princess Anne. Md. They are both within 1/2 hour of NASA's Wallops facility. We have decided that this is a spectacular opportunity for AMSAT to do a win-win-win deal. The deal is done on AMSAT's side. The AMSAT board of directors unanimously approved a memorandum of understanding with the University of Maryland and another with Maryland Hawk. Maryland Hawk will be our integration and testing facility. We will have 6000 square feet of machine shop and integration facility. The clean room from AO-40 will become the first clean room in the new facility. The employees of HISS will be on our satellite building, testing, and integration team along with lots of help from volunteers but we will definitely have a superb core unit on site at all times. This will also allow us to maintain the controlled access which will be required (legally) for our operations.
Hawk is very ambitious and AMSAT is going to get ambitious with them. HISS is a not for profit, 501c3 organization (like AMSAT), affiliated with UMES through the Hawk corporation. UMES is attempting to grow their involvement in providing excellent technical jobs in the area and to increase the content of their curriculum. AMSAT will assist HISS in working with Cubesat, small sat, etc. of all types. The members of AMSAT that choose to work with HISS on their programs will be encouraged to do exactly that and with AMSAT's blessing. AMSAT types would be adjunct faculty at UMES and UMES will support us with local facilities and student involvement in our projects. HISS wants to become a player in all sorts of small satellite activities and AMSAT, in concert with these two groups, wants to seriously enhance its educational profile.
I am very excited about this opportunity for AMSAT. So is the board of directors and the Eagle Project manager all of whom have been terrifically supportive and actively involved. The board asked lots of tough questions, and were quite careful with AMSAT's interests here. On a personal note, I REALLY like these people at UMES and Hawk. They are "our kinds of folks". They are aggressive, ambitious, and have a vision of where they want to go. I want us to go with them and they want to go with us along the path we want to take our programs. We (unanimously) believe this is the right thing for us to do at this juncture.
The launch environment has been undergoing major shifts in the last few years and major U.S. policy is about to be sprung on us. We believe this will impact us very positively. We believe we are poised to take advantage of this changing environment. With this new facility and the new environment, expect us to move out aggressively in several areas and keep your fingers crossed for results. We are working on a technical assistance agreement (a term of art in the ITAR/Import/Export regime) that we will submit to AMSAT-DL, AMSAT-UK, etc. so we can again enter into working relationships with them as well and to do it with the blessing of the U.S. government (which is now required).
I thank each and every one of you for your spectacularly generous contributions to AMSAT and we hope we are now poised to take maximum advantage of these contributions. I have attached google earth map pointers to the University, the HISS facility, and finally to the "visitor center, launch viewing area" at Wallops.
Please remember, you are not authorized to release this. We have an agreement with the university and Hawk about press releases and this is not one of them! Thank you all for your patience.
Bob N4HY