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Google Lunar X PRIZE Mission Animation

acsete — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:46:51 -0800

Dan Jenkins has created a new Google Lunar X PRIZE mission animation for us. Enjoy!

Moon 2.0 Simulator Update: Ground Stations

acsete — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:29:28 -0800

The Moon 2.0 Simulator (see announcement from last week) has been updated to support ground stations for communications.

Main menu→View→Stations — allows you to enable / disable ground stations
Main menu→Options→Stations — allows you to choose between the available networks

When ground stations are enabled, green markers represent ground stations within range of the spacecraft and red markers represent ground stations out of range. You will also see a straight line connecting the spacecraft and the ground station when they are within range.

The updated package comes with a database of existing commercial and governmental ground station networks but you can easily add your own stations. The data file Stations.csv contains comma-separated values in plain text format that can be edited using a spreadsheet application or a simple text editor.

The video below shows an example simulation "Picorover to the Moon" with ground stations enabled.

You can download the new release from the Google Code page : moon-20_100120_0931-win32.zip.

Moon 2.0 Simulator for Lunar Bus Trajectory Assistance

Rob — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:57:25 -0800

Team FREDNET is offering the Google Lunar X-Prize community a new software application called the Moon 2.0 Simulator. Joshua Tristancho and Juan Martinez have designed and programmed the application to simulate a Lunar Bus Trajectory from the Earth to the Moon with a diverse set of mission variables to support a high level of customization.

The application uses an OpenGL visualization that displays imagery from GoogleEarth to provide a high level of realism. Support is included for generating Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files. This XML-schema format expresses geographic positioning annotations that can be loaded and viewed in a other geospatial mapping applications that support KML (such as KDE Marble).

If you're interested in checking it out, it's available. Just download this zipfile to your Windows system, extract it, and run the "Moon" executable. The interface has a bit of a learning curve, but the release has a couple of good features that make it easy to use.

It's distributed with about a dozen "Preprogrammed Mission Simulations" which a user can load up and click "Play" (via the right-click context window). Click the image to the right to enlarge a screen capture taken from the included simulation of an Apollo launch.

Also, the release contains a Reference Manual (see Moon.pdf after you extract the files from the zipfile) which provides a detailed (yet concise) description of how to use Moon 2.0 Simulator. Andrés Petilo and Boone Adkins are creditted with maintaining and improving the information provided in the Moon 2.0 manual.

Happy Simulating!

Interview with Team Prometheus

acsete — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:21:22 -0800

Today, the Space Fellowship has published an interview with Team Prometheus about their current work, which includes building our Mark I lander prototype. You can read the interview on the Space Fellowship website: Team Prometheus - Upcoming Tests, The N-Prize and the GLXP.

University Group collaborates on Lunar Lander Design

Rob — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:53:37 -0800

What do you get when you cross a multi-national competition with "exploration through open source collaboration" and add a bit of youthful motivation for good measure? Give up? You get Team Cheese, a group of mechanical engineering seniors from Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. While completing the course requirements for their design capstone course, Team Cheese assisted Team FREDNET on a very challenging problem.

How can you bring approximately 200kg with significant downward momentum to a stop while minimizing the impact force upon the mission load with a system that conforms to a minimal weight requirement?

The image illustrates a design method that uses three pod legs cantilevered by secondary struts which compress to absorb impact forces during the landing. What's more interesting, the design is backed up by a very detailed and expansive report that includes all the calculations used that led to this particular design. This report also includes constraints that will be critical when it comes time to scale this model to the final Lunar Landing System, which adds much future value to Team FREDNET.

What's the lesson to take away from all this? Team FREDNET is actively looking to engage in more partnerships with University teams as the design evolves and the goals become more solid. Team FREDNET has open tasks related to Lunar Bus Battery Selection, adding Solar Cells to the lander design, selecting a Laser Rangefinder that's appropriate for the navigation during landing, and even opportunities for a team to determine a good way to protect the Team FREDNET Lunar Rover from dangerous space radiation and a whole lot more! Anybody interested in any one of these tasks is encouraged to contact Fred Bourgeois [fred (dot) bourgeois (at) teamfrednet (dot) org] for further information and contacts to further develop an applicable project formulation that adapt to individual University design requirements.

Freezer test of HTC Magic phone batteries.

acsete — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:06:08 -0800

The balloon launch planned for last week had to be postponed. The first attempt was cancelled because the battery in the phone got discharged before the launch. The second attempt was prohibited by the weather (most of Europe got covered with snow).

Instead, a freezer test has been performed on the batteries in the HTC Magic phone to see how well they work at -18° C (0° F). This can provide some answers to questions raised in the discussions at a previous post.

At high altitudes the situation will be better because of the lower pressure. There is also an extended version of the test recorded on Livestream.

Watch live streaming video from frednetballoon at livestream.com

We wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year. If you don't celebrate Christmas you can celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first Ariane launch that happened on 24th December, 1979.

PicoRover Test on Sand

acsete — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:28:10 -0800

Last week, several PicoRover prototypes were tested in a sandbox in order to study their characteristics on steep slopes. The difference between the prototypes for this experiment was the outer surface of the shield:
1. PicoRover with blank surface
2. PicoRover with spikes
3. The recently introduced PicoRover with long hair (or mustache?) instead of spikes.

Fun with a Chinese Satellite

acsete — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:11:42 -0800

Lets have some fun with a Chinese satellite!

At 0230 UTC this morning, the Chinese Yaogen-8 Remote Sensing Satellite has been successfully launched by a CZ-4C rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center into a sun-synchronous orbit about 1200 km high. The launcher also carried a secondary payload, which is the first Chinese amateur radio satellite called XW-1. The XW-1 communications payload includes a beacon and three cross band transponders operating in FM, linear, and digital modes.

XW-1 beacon transmits housekeeping telemetry in Morse code on the UHF band around 435.790 MHz. Here is one of the first recordings of XW-1 telemetry made available by Mateusz SQ7DQX.

Direct link to MP3 file.

Listen to the audio and try to write down the letters and numbers. If you write them down correctly you should be able to decode the housekeeping telemetry using the format description published here.

You want more? Here is a longer recording of a whole pass (16 minutes) recorded at 1130 UTC:

Direct link to MP3 file.

Due to the simple format it is very easy for anyone to receive and decode this telemetry without any fancy satcom equipment. If you or your friends have a scanner that can receive 435.790 MHz SSB/CW you can try to listen for it yourself but you may need a medium gain antenna like a UHF TV antenna. Indoor TV antenna might also work; what's important is that you have clear line of sight, i.e. not behind walls or trees. Once XW-1 is officially commissioned you can predict the passes over your location using online tools like Heavens Above or the AMSAT passs predictor. Don't forget to listen +/- 10 kHz due to Doppler shift!

There is more info about XW-1 on the AMSAT China website.

Have fun!

More on the HTC Magic in the PicoRover

acsete — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:34:32 -0800

In case you were a little confused over why we put a HTC Magic phone in a PicoRover shield, here is some more info...

The HTC Magic is running the Wikisat Balloon Recovery System, which in the current version records GPS data and also sends it via SMS when it is below a certain altitude. The HTC Magic is based on the Android operating system, which provides us with an open and easily accessible platform for hacking the phone.

We are looking forward to the Nexus One :-)

New lander look and live webcams

acsete — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:32:32 -0800

The lander structure presented earlier has got a shinier look since the aluminum honeycomb panels have been mounted on the sides.

From Lunar Lander

There are now also two live webcams in the workshops:

Team Prometheus workshop cam in Texas – running 24/7
PicoRover workshop cam in Spain – running when there is activity otherwise replaying the latest recorded activity.

Past recordings are available on demand. We'll try to synthesize some clips into videos, though there is already so many hours that we may have to crowdsource it! Any volunteers?