Crew Continues Station Science, Ready for Expedition 15
SUBMITTED BY ARTHUR N1ORC - AMSAT A/C #31468
*Crew Continues Station Science, Ready for Expedition 15*
Image above: Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria inserts a test sample into a freezer as part of the NUTRITION experiment. Image credit: NASA
TO VIEW IMAGE GO TO: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
The Expedition 14 crew members continue science, maintenance and exercise activities as they prepare to greet their replacement crew – Expedition 15.
Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and Flight Engineer Suni Williams are pursuing final investigations with the NUTRITION experiment. They will take blood and urine samples, process them in a centrifuge and store them in a freezer. Williams is also exercising heavily for the upcoming Boston Marathon which she will run in space.
Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin continues his maintenance duties in the Russian segment of the International Space Station.
Expedition 15 launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome Saturday at 1:31 p.m. EDT. They will dock at the station Monday about 3:12 p.m. in their Soyuz spacecraft.
ISS Amateur Radio Status: April 5, 2007
By Miles Mann WF1F,
MAREX-MG News www.marexmg.org
Manned Amateur Radio Experiment
ISS Crew Change April 2007
There will be a crew change taking place on ISS this month. The existing Expedition #14 currently consists of:
Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria Flight Engineer and Soyuz commander Mikhail Tyurin Flight Engineer Sunita Williams. Ms. Williams arrived via the Shuttle STS-116 mission last fall. She will also stay on ISS after the crew change in April and become part of the Crew #15. Launch dates, September 18, 2006 through April 20 2007
The new crew #15 will consist of: Spaceflight Participant Charles Simonyi, an American flying under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency. Charles will return to Earth with Expedition 14 on April 20th with Lopez-Algeria and Tyurin. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov
Amateur Radio Status:
Voice and Packet: The Kenwood D700 celebrated its 3-year of service last December. However after three years of 24/7 usage has taken its toll. Last August the memory channels became too corrupted to be reliable. The procedures given to the crew to configure a channel combination did not always match the instructions and there were a few times when I heard the ISS crew calling for a school and ISS was on the wrong uplink frequency. The D700 was removed from Public access last August and is only being used for pre-arranged school schedules, etc.
The good news is that we may get an opportunity to reload the OS on the D700 during the upcoming crew change. The D700 on ISS is running a special OS and channels setup, created just for the ISS. If time allows, the D700 will get a fresh OS reload to set it back to the launch configuration. The OS reload, also includes a very complex channel configuration and other unique settings. The OS reload requires the removal of the covers and the installation of a special ribbon cable. See the attached link (bottom left Picture). As a back up plan, if the reload fails, a few basic channels may be hand keyed into the radio.
http://www.marexmg.org/hardware/kenwood.html
Ericcsons Systems: The Erriccson HT systems are not currently being used because of an intermittent cable issue. No date on when replacement parts will be flown at this time. The PacCom modems attached to the Ericcsons have not been activate in 3+ years and the memory batteries are probably not functional.
http://www.marexmg.org/hardware/ericcson.html
Slow Scan TV: The Marex Slow Scan TV project, SpaceCam1 was activated for a few weeks last August using a Borrowed Laptop. The amateur radio projects still do not have a dedicated laptop for the projects and there are no laptops scheduled for flight to be used for Amateur Radio usage on ISS in the foreseeable future.
http://www.marexmg.org/imagessstv/SpaceCamImages1.htm
Future Projects: Marex is working on keeping ISS accessible and affordable by keeping it on the air. We have submitted proposals for a new packet system, which has been initially approved. We are also working on other proposals, including proposals to replace most of the aging hardware with new state-of-the-art hardware. The goal is to keep it simple and kept it on the air. Your support is always welcome.
School Schedules: If you want to listen to ISS school schedules on the 145.800, then you should check the ARISS web page to seen when the next time ISS will be on the air in your part of the world. Listeners are encouraged to tune in and listing to the ARISS School down links.
Information about the next scheduled ARISS contact can be found at http://www.rac.ca/ariss/upcoming.htm#NextContact .
Marexmg Web page http://www.marexmg.org
ARISS Web page and other great Space projects http://www.rac.ca/ariss/
73 Miles WF1F MAREX-MG
Until we meet again
DOSVIDANIYA Miles WF1F
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Miles, It would be good to get your facts correct before sending something like this out. The OS on the D700 is not being reloaded. Only the parameters and channels are being reset. We have no evidence of any king of failure of the D700. The only problem is that some of the parameters were changed during the attempt to use it for SSTV. We do not know what changes were made and have no simple way to determine what they were. The only practical solution is to completely reload all the parameters and channel data to a known set of values. We hope to have that done by Charles Simonyi. He has generously agreed to use some of his precious time to do that while onboard ISS. It is not a fully approved thing yet since the software must be certified to be safe before it can be sent to the ISS. We are in the process of doing that at this time.
You imply that there has been a failure of the D700. This is a disservice to the folks who built it, donated it to the ISS-HAM project and have given us their full support all along. While it is possible to see some effects from the radiation environment eventually, we haven't seen any yet. This is after all a radio designed for use under the protective Earth's atmosphere. Let's not make any assumptions without having some facts to support them.
You also state that there is a cable problem with the Ericsson. We do not know that for a fact. All we know is that there were some problems with a school contact. This problem could have been caused by a cable or from ground or onboard interference. Until we can do some tests we can only speculate. Speculation is a counterproductive exercise. We are also hoping to get a test done on the Ericsson while Charles is on ISS. That is also not for sure at this time. We are looking forward to him having a great flight.
Lou McFadin W5DID ARISS US Hardware manager
On Apr 5, 2007, at 3:26 PM, MM wrote:
ISS Amateur Radio Status: April 5, 2007
By Miles Mann WF1F,
MAREX-MG News www.marexmg.org
Manned Amateur Radio Experiment
ISS Crew Change April 2007
There will be a crew change taking place on ISS this month. The existing Expedition #14 currently consists of:
Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria Flight Engineer and Soyuz commander Mikhail Tyurin Flight Engineer Sunita Williams. Ms. Williams arrived via the Shuttle STS-116 mission last fall. She will also stay on ISS after the crew change in April and become part of the Crew #15. Launch dates, September 18, 2006 through April 20 2007
The new crew #15 will consist of: Spaceflight Participant Charles Simonyi, an American flying under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency. Charles will return to Earth with Expedition 14 on April 20th with Lopez-Algeria and Tyurin. Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov
Amateur Radio Status:
Voice and Packet: The Kenwood D700 celebrated its 3-year of service last December. However after three years of 24/7 usage has taken its toll. Last August the memory channels became too corrupted to be reliable. The procedures given to the crew to configure a channel combination did not always match the instructions and there were a few times when I heard the ISS crew calling for a school and ISS was on the wrong uplink frequency. The D700 was removed from Public access last August and is only being used for pre-arranged school schedules, etc.
The good news is that we may get an opportunity to reload the OS on the D700 during the upcoming crew change. The D700 on ISS is running a special OS and channels setup, created just for the ISS. If time allows, the D700 will get a fresh OS reload to set it back to the launch configuration. The OS reload, also includes a very complex channel configuration and other unique settings. The OS reload requires the removal of the covers and the installation of a special ribbon cable. See the attached link (bottom left Picture). As a back up plan, if the reload fails, a few basic channels may be hand keyed into the radio.
http://www.marexmg.org/hardware/kenwood.html
Ericcsons Systems: The Erriccson HT systems are not currently being used because of an intermittent cable issue. No date on when replacement parts will be flown at this time. The PacCom modems attached to the Ericcsons have not been activate in 3+ years and the memory batteries are probably not functional.
http://www.marexmg.org/hardware/ericcson.html
Slow Scan TV: The Marex Slow Scan TV project, SpaceCam1 was activated for a few weeks last August using a Borrowed Laptop. The amateur radio projects still do not have a dedicated laptop for the projects and there are no laptops scheduled for flight to be used for Amateur Radio usage on ISS in the foreseeable future.
http://www.marexmg.org/imagessstv/SpaceCamImages1.htm
Future Projects: Marex is working on keeping ISS accessible and affordable by keeping it on the air. We have submitted proposals for a new packet system, which has been initially approved. We are also working on other proposals, including proposals to replace most of the aging hardware with new state-of-the-art hardware. The goal is to keep it simple and kept it on the air. Your support is always welcome.
School Schedules: If you want to listen to ISS school schedules on the 145.800, then you should check the ARISS web page to seen when the next time ISS will be on the air in your part of the world. Listeners are encouraged to tune in and listing to the ARISS School down links.
Information about the next scheduled ARISS contact can be found at http://www.rac.ca/ariss/upcoming.htm#NextContact .
Marexmg Web page http://www.marexmg.org
ARISS Web page and other great Space projects http://www.rac.ca/ariss/
73 Miles WF1F MAREX-MG
Until we meet again
DOSVIDANIYA Miles WF1F
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Sent via sarex@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Not an AMSAT member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program! Subscription settings: http://amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/sarex
Miles overstates the D700 problems. The memory channels didn't become corrupted; they are fine. Physically, the radio is fine. What happened was that the programmed operating modes (PMs, in D700 terminology) were overwritten by unplanned (and unknown) changes, probably during the SSTV try-outs. Without reliable PMs, changing modes requires a lengthy and error-prone procedure to switch between packet operations and school contacts. Therefore, the radio was manually put in the school contact configuration and left there. That is its primary mission.
Fixing the PMs does not require an OS load (whatever that means). The custom EPROM firmware, which modified some of the D700's functions for space use, doesn't need to be changed. The PMs are just operator configurations that can be reloaded from a computer via a serial port on the front of the radio, without disassembling anything. All that is needed is the computer, crew training, and scheduled crew time to do it (all of which are hard to arrange on ISS).
-- Dave, W8AAS
On Apr 5, 2007, at 3:26 PM, MM wrote:
ISS Amateur Radio Status: April 5, 2007
By Miles Mann WF1F,
Voice and Packet: The Kenwood D700 celebrated its 3-year of service last December. However after three years of 24/7 usage has taken its toll. Last August the memory channels became too corrupted to be reliable. The procedures given to the crew to configure a channel combination did not always match the instructions and there were a few times when I heard the ISS crew calling for a school and ISS was on the wrong uplink frequency. The D700 was removed from Public access last August and is only being used for pre-arranged school schedules, etc.
The good news is that we may get an opportunity to reload the OS on the D700 during the upcoming crew change. The D700 on ISS is running a special OS and channels setup, created just for the ISS. If time allows, the D700 will get a fresh OS reload to set it back to the launch configuration. The OS reload, also includes a very complex channel configuration and other unique settings. The OS reload requires the removal of the covers and the installation of a special ribbon cable. See the attached link (bottom left Picture). As a back up plan, if the reload fails, a few basic channels may be hand keyed into the radio.
HI Dave Thank you very much for clarifying which one of the two reload procedures will be attempted on ISS Soon.
The Serial port connector on the front of the radio is the easiest load to use. It allows you to quickly upload channel settings.
The Internal load is used for loading the more complex configurations.
Lets hope that Charles Simonyi gets some time to try the reload, so we can put one issue behind us.
SSTV Testing:
During the SSTV testing last summer we ran into a few unexpected problems. The first problem was we did not have a set of written procedures to instruct the crew which buttons to push on the radio to accept the SSTV Audio over the DIN connector.
The Second problem was, SpaceCam SSTV was never tested with a D700 loaded with ISS-Flight software.
The SSTV software SpaceCam1, had been tested on 4 different operation systems, Dozens of computers, Dozens of transceivers, including a Stock Terrestrial version of the D700. All configurations with good results. However it had never been tested on a D700 that was using the Special ISS-Flight version of the operating system.
A problem that was quickly discovered in Flight, was that when SSTV audio was fed into the DIN connector on the D700, it was directed to the wrong down link frequency. The problem was caused by the unique way the D700 software was configured. This special D700 is always running packet and both Bands at the same time. The ISS crew had to experiment with different voice channels and button configurations until they found one that worked. In the process a few channel configurations may have changed.
In the future we hope to approve a tested procure that supports SSTV.
WF1F Marex SpaceCam1
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participants (4)
-
Arthur Rowe -
Dave Taylor -
Louis McFadin -
MM