{"id":3575,"date":"2011-02-10T23:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-10T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/02\/10\/from-the-guys-who-found-the-nano-sail-satellite-signal\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T15:43:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T05:43:26","slug":"from-the-guys-who-found-the-nano-sail-satellite-signal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2011\/02\/10\/from-the-guys-who-found-the-nano-sail-satellite-signal\/","title":{"rendered":"From The Guys Who Found the Nano-Sail Satellite Signal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Howdy Bill, and all the SolderSmokers listening in on the PodCast.<\/span><\/p>\n

We appreciate the shoutout in #130 about the NanoSail-D excitement .!.<\/span> Stan – N4PMF and I have been working over the last year or so to<\/span> re-activate the Amateur Radio Club at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.<\/span> We both have day jobs in the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC),<\/span> and routinely interface with the scientists and developers involved<\/span> with projects such as the <\/span>International Space Station<\/span>, <\/span>Space Shuttle<\/span> propulsion, and more recently the FastSat program.<\/p>\n

<\/span>\"\"<\/a>The NanoSail project<\/span> is actually a smaller satellite that was carried into orbit by the FastSat.<\/span> This NanoSail vehicle is only about 18 inches long, and a few inches square.<\/span> No room there for high powered S-Band telemetry transmitters, so it carried<\/span> a ham licensed 1\/2 watt FM transmitter in the 70cm band. Maybe later we<\/span> can get into more detail about all that if you are interested.<\/p>\n

The NanoSail<\/span> is the first successful deployment of a <\/span>Solar Sail<\/span> into earth orbit.<\/span> The quicker story is that our club (WA4NZD) was started in the early-1970s,<\/span> and operated Special Events commemmorating Apollo flights to the moon,<\/span> Skylab<\/span> missions, and early shuttle launches. Activity kinda dropped off<\/span> in the mid-1990s, and the club is only now coming back to life. We still<\/span> have VHF and UHF transcievers and beam antennas on a tower, that are<\/span> ready to operate – and sometimes we listen in on ISS school contacts,<\/span> or bounce APRS beacons thru the <\/span>ARISS<\/span> digipeater.<\/p>\n

We of course got excited<\/span> back in December when FastSat launched, and the NASA scientists asked if<\/span> we could help them by listening for the NanoSail when it ejected.<\/span> Unfortunately, Murphy had snuck on-board, and somehow prevented the smaller<\/span> satellite from completely ejecting, and it looked like a loss….<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Then in January the FastSat telemetry indicated that NanoSail-D may have<\/span> ‘popped itself out’, and the Principal Investigator Dean Alhorn found<\/span> Stan and asked if we could take him to the station “NOW” to listen for it.<\/span> Sure enough, we had the right equipment, ready to go, and he got to hear<\/span> it for the first time. We even had the AX25 TNC hooked up and it decoded<\/span> a telemetry burst which allowed them to better estimate when the SolarSail<\/span> should deploy. Dean was very very excited, and we all enjoyed a bit of<\/span> the spotlight as Dean made obvious reference in numerous press releases to<\/span> the role of the MSFC Amateur Radio Club in helping get the word out.<\/span> The power of ‘crowd-sourced’ science became obvious as they received<\/span> reports from all around the world. We are lucky to have been ready,<\/span> willing and able to decode that early telemetry – it sure will help to<\/span> validate and justify the existence of our little club station at <\/span>NASA<\/span>.<\/span> You can easily find more on the internet, searching for NANOSAIL and WA4NZD.<\/span><\/p>\n

Again we appreciate the publicity from your Podcast, and look forward to<\/span> tuning in more often, and possibly sending you more info for your show.<\/span> Thanks \/;^)<\/span> Alan Sieg – WB5RMG (<\/span>http:\/\/wb5rmg.wordpress.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/span> Stan Sims – N4PMF<\/span> MSFC ARC – WA4NZD (<\/span>http:\/\/wa4nzd.wordpress.com<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Howdy Bill, and all the SolderSmokers listening in on the PodCast. We appreciate the shoutout in #130 about the NanoSail-D excitement .!. Stan – N4PMF and I have been working over the last year or so to re-activate the Amateur Radio Club at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. We both have day jobs in the … Continue reading “From The Guys Who Found the Nano-Sail Satellite Signal”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-satellites","category-space-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3579,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3575\/revisions\/3579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}