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          T H E  S P A R T N I K  Countdown...

Your official newsletter from the San Jose State University 

           Microsatellite Design Laboratory



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                  October 31, 1996 

                    9:00 a.m. PST

                 Volume #1, Issue #2



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This monthly newsletter is distributed via email. If 

you do not wish to receive this newsletter, reply to 

this message stating as such and your name will be 

removed.





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               Announcements In Brief

           -------------------------------



* Manufacturing of the flight model 

  of the satellite has begun

* '96-'97 Systems Engineer Named

* Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space Co.

  named Sponsor of the Month

* Wiring harness developed

* AX.25 coding progressing 

* University Grant Received



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PROJECT MISSION STATEMENT:

To educate undergraduate students in the process of 

managing and developing a microsatellite. To prepare 

the students for successful careers in the Aerospace 

Community, by creating an industry-like  project 

environment. And to bring the direct involvement of 

the industry into the education process through 

mentorship and project alliances.

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_____________________________________________________

How to contact us - 



Prof. Hank Pernicka - (408) 924-4054

hank@voyager.engr.sjsu.edu



Tom Romano - (408) 756-0214

tom.romano@lmco.com



Kathy Morgan - (408) 776-4736

morgank@pluto.csd.com



Colleen Kennedy -  

colleen@jupiter.engr.sjsu.edu

_____________________________________________________



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                  Meeting Milestones:



           Manufacturing of the flight vehicle 

               structural bus has begun.           
    


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Project Status:



@ ATTITUDE DETERMINATION AND CONTROL 

During September ADAC made progress towards

the first of their goals.  The Equations of 

Motion (EOMs) for Spartnik were programmed 

into Matlab for simulation testing.  These 

EOMs are currently undergoing refinement 

while work has begun on modeling the different 

external torques that the satellite will be 

experiencing while in orbit.  By the end of 

next month we hope to have working models for 

most of these forces and will begin simulations 

to determine how effective Spartnik's passive 

attitude control design will be.



@ STRUCTURES

Structures is deeply involved in the final 

integration of the flight vehicle. Final

modifications are being incorporated, along with

the production of each part of the satellite. Even

ith the increased demands on redesign, the 

Structures team has handled the challenge and have 

gone into full production.



@ PAYLOAD

The major goal for the Payload Subsystem Team for 

September was the redesign of the camera mounting. 

The previous camera design failed the shake test 

which was performed over the summer and, since the 

fabrication of Spartnik began during the first part 

of October, the camera box was a priority.  The 

Payload team quickly determined the weaknesses of 

the original camera mounting and was able to come up 

with several new designs.  After obtaining input 

from industry advisors and several revisions, the

final decision for the camera mounting has been 

finished.



The second major issue being resolved involves the 

third payload. Because of its expense and difficulty 

to incorporate, the radiation sensor has been dropped 

from consideration.  The payload team is currently 

researching a possible third experiment which will

involve only minor software modifications and which

will use cross-correlation of PN sequences to 

determine the time for a signal to be returned from

the spacecraft, enabling the ground station to 

calculate Spartnik's orbital elements during a single

pass over San Jose.



@ POWER

The power subsystem took on the role of systems 

integrators and designed the wiring harness and 

assigned pin-to-pin connections for all the required
 
hook-ups. The power team has begun building the 

required harness in the mockup structure. Battery

construction has been completed and the protoflight

batteries are ready to enter the testing phase. Final

designs of switching and microswitches are 

progressing toward the testing phase.



@ THERMAL

The black paint and FOSR types have been chosen and

will be purchased in the upcoming month. For analysis,

we are looking into acquiring SINDA for the PCs to 

analyze the thermal properties of Spartnik. We will 

find out the maximum and minimum temperatures first, 

and, if time permits, find out what the temperature 

traits of the spacecraft are. 



@ LAUNCH VEHICLE AND ORBIT

Orbit simulations will begin early next week at

inclinations of 30, 60, 90, and 120 degrees with

altitudes of 300, 600, 900, and 1200 km at each

inclination.  Orbit simulations will be on Pohop with

J2, Solar Radiation Pressure and Third Body 

perturbations all on.  Orbit simulations will also

be on Orbview to help visualize the simulated orbits.



@ COMPUTER HARDWARE

Currently, we are still waiting for the arrival of our 

DIP 256K x 8 memory chips for mounting onto the wire-

wrapped version of our board.  We will also be ordering

more chips for the wire-wrapped board, and begin ordering 

some of the surface mount components for the final fabbed 

4 layer board.  Once the board is up an running, we will

begin implementing the temperature sensor MUX circuits

and begin calibrating all of the AD590KH temperature sensors.

In the meantime, Dr. Petersen is looking into the power circuitry 

and beginning the design of the Communications Tx/Rx hardware.



@ COMPUTER SOFTWARE

Currently, Danilo Unite is making excellent progress on

the AX.25 packet layer, the middle layer of the three

communications layers.  Through the guidance of industry

mentor Ron Fischler, we discovered the need for a third 

layer in the communications modules.  The third layer will

be assigned to Tim Kimmet; this layer having the specs outlined

from a public domain document already existing {PACSAT}. 

This third layer will take into account the issues of file 

I/O via the packet protocol.  The top layer of the communications,

the communications code in the actual main event loop, will 

either be put on hold until someone is finished with their

current modules, or will be worked on concurrently by Tim 

Kimmet.  John Bargamian is working on the lower layer of 

the comm software, mostly hardware drivers. John will also

be taking over some of the more general hardware drivers
 
that run the on-board computer (OBC).   Still to be 

implemented for the on-board code is the "bare-bones" file

system, the memory drivers, some other hardware drivers, and

the analog sensor sweep routines.  New to the SPARTNIK 

community is John Robinson, a Computer Science graduate 

student who is taking on the ground station code and some 

of the camera software issues; welcome aboard John R!  He

is currently working with Jeff Nokes on the initial design

of the GUI SPARTNIK ground station API for control and 

operation of the spacecraft.  Also, Mr. Robinson is looking 

into the feasibility of using Kodak's proprietary compression 

algorithms along with JPEG compression, in order to make the

mission of the camera more desirable for our needs.  Jonas

Sosa is currently looking into the Microsoft Access scripts 

to process the telemetry once received by the vehicle.  Jeff 

Nokes is concentrating on the overall software specifications 

of the main event loop, the ground station specs, the A/D

drivers and the global static data structure needed for the

analog sensor sweeps.  After discussion with Ron Fischler 

and Dr. Stephen Petersen, Jeff's role as Systems Engineer for 

the Computer/Communications subsystems will be changing 

slightly to allow more control, flexibility and responsibility

to the actual programmers.



@ GROUND STATION

Currently Norm Kow is doing of research about other 

microsatellites.  Norm will use the ground station computer 

to try to login into other OSCAR satellites 

to see what information is available from them.  Right now, we 

have little information as to how a user appears to the computer

once he/she is logged in.  Also, we don't know too much about 

security access control, file system handling mechanisms, and 

communications mechanisms.  Norm has been surfing the web lately 

and has contacted Paul Williamson of AMSAT to get the PACSAT 

document for layer 3 of the communications protocol.  As of now, 

Norm's priority is to find out how other OSCAR satellites utilizes 

a firewall system for their security, and how they handle their 

file systems.  Although, Norm will certainly try to find out as 

much information as possible, the firewall and file handling 

systems is his current priority.  



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~~~~~~~~'96-'97 SYSTEMS ENGINEER NAMED~~~~~~~~~~~~~



After many highly qualified candidates from the 

current AE 170 class were considered for the position 

of Systems Engineer, Ms. Colleen Kennedy was named to 

the position.  Her strong leadership, along with the 

continuing service from the two previous Systems Engineers

Tom Romano and Kathy Morgan, will be vital to the success

of Project Spartnik.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~







########## UNIVERSITY GRANT RECEIVED! ###############



Professor Pernicka was recently notified that a proposal

to the university was granted for the amount of $6800.

The funds are to be used to purchase equipment for the

construction of Spartnik.  The funds will be a great

help in completing Spartnik in a timely manner.  Thanks

are due to Kathy Morgan and Tom Romano who assisted

Professor Pernicka with writing the proposal.



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           ******Sponsor of the Month******



                    LOCKHEED MARTIN

                 Missiles & Space Company

                     Sunnyvale, CA



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Lockheed Martin recently notified the Aerospace 

Engineering faculty that they would be renewing their 

grant to the department for the '96-'97 year.  The 

grant is for $50,000 and will be used to finance the 

construction of Spartnik and for infrastructure in 

the Aerospace Engineering Program to support Spartnik 

development and spacecraft design in general.



Receipt of this grant is very much appreciated and 

will be a great aid in meeting the prime goal of 

Project Spartnik - the education of students in 

spacecraft design.  The Aerospace Engineering faculty 

and the Spartnik team extend their thanks to Lockheed 

Martin and Ms. Pat Machmiller for their support of 

our program.





             Thanks again Lockheed Martin!

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Editor's Note:



The editor is still requesting industry contributors, 

mentors and educators to contact him with comments or 

suggestions about the SPARTNIK project. Discussions 

on project performance, benefits to students, 

industry and the education community, may be sent to 

the editor. Also, ideas on how to improve the project,

information on joint venture opportunities, secondary 

payload launch leads, or collaboration interests can 

also be sent. These responses will be posted in the 

following issue. This is being done to encourage 

industry feedback to the project managers, to 

increase industry involvement, and to inform other 

companies and universities on what is happening at 

San Jose State, by the use of a direct line 

communications tool. If responses come in on a 

regular basis, this information will be posted under 

the article title "Industry Speaks Out" every month.

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SPECIAL THANKS TO.......



Over the past two years, many companies and 

individuals have contributed in some way to project 

SPARTNIK thus making it a reality for many students.
 
The team members and the Aerospace Engineering 

department faculty would like to thank the following:



Lockheed Martin Corp.

Loral Space Systems

Applied Solar Energy Corp.

United Technologies Corp. - Chemical Systems Division

Optical Coating Laboratory Inc.

Satellite Power Corp.

Teledyne Corp.

Kodak

Logitech

Martin Marietta

Eagle Picher

Phillips Semiconductor

Teklam

Kajon Inc.

Stanford University - SSDL



    ........for their contributions...Thank you.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR:



This newsletter is also published on the World Wide
 
Web, where the current and past issues of "The 

SPARTNIK Countdown..." can be viewed, with its 

related graphics and more detailed articles. You can 

access the SPARTNIK Countdown page at: 



http://www.nanospace.com/~asesur/us/spartnik/spartnik_nl.html



This monthly newsletter is distributed, via email, to 

those who contributed, sponsored or expressed interest

in this project. Feel free to forward this newsletter

to any colleagues. If you want to be added to the 

distribution list or have questions or comments about

the project or this newsletter, send the information 

to tom.romano@lmco.com. If you do not wish to receive

this newsletter, reply to this message stating as 

such and your name will be removed.



Thank you, 

Tom Romano

Systems Engineer

Project SPARTNIK

Editor and Publisher

"The SPARTNIK Countdown..."

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End Transmission -  Volume #1, Issue #2, October 1996

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