AMSAT 2020 Space Symposium video now online
By Dan Romanchik, KB6NU
The 38th AMSAT Space Symposium and Annual General Meeting was held online on October 17, 2020. I'm kinda bummed about this because I just joined AMSAT, but somehow, I managed to miss this event. Fortunately, the symposium was recorded and is now online, and I've been enjoying watching the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHDgrI_w8hY
The video includes updates on AMSAT projects and presentations on amateur satellite technology. For details on presenter names and presentation titles, visit the AMSAT web site. AMSAT members can access the Symposium Proceedings on the AMSAT web site as well.
(The proceedings for all the AMSAT Symposiums are available there as well, but you do have to be an AMSAT member.)
Here’s a list of the different presentations on the video and the times at which they start:
0:00:00 Welcome
0:02:07 AMSAT GOLF-TEE System Overview and Development Status
0:43:02 GOLF IHU Coordination
1:19:10 GOLF Downlink Coordination
1:50:15 FUNcube Next
2:13:50 LunART – Luna Amateur Radio Transponder
2:45:35 CatSat HF Experiment Overview
3:13:30 Neutron-1 CubeSat
3:39:58 Progress and Development of Open Source Electric Propulsion for Nanosats and Picosats
4:15:00 AMSAT Education
5:14:00 ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station) / AREx (Amateur Radio Exploration)
6:14:00 AMSAT Engineering
7:21:16 AMSAT Annual General Meeting
So far, I’ve only watched the GOLF-TEE System Overview and the AMSAT Education presentation. They were both interesting and I’m looking forward to watching the others.
I really hadn’t been keeping up with AMSAT lately, so the the presentation on the GOLF project was definitely news to me. GOLF is an ambitious project aimed at sending up high Earth orbit (HEO) satellites. GOLF is short for “Greater Orbits Larger (user communication) Footprints.” This is really pretty exciting stuff.
Watching these presentations really gives one an appreciation for the work that goes into the design of these satellites and the technical skills and dedication of the hams working on these projects. These guys are not getting paid to do any of this work, and as Eric Skoog, K1TVV, the GOLF System Engineer said in his presentation, “Space is hard.”
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Dan Romanchik, KB6NU, is the author of the KB6NU amateur radio blog (KB6NU.Com), the “No Nonsense” amateur radio license study guides (KB6NU.com/study-guides/), and often appears on the ICQPodcast (icqpodcast.com). When he's not trying to work the satellites, he teaches online ham radio classes and operates CW on the HF bands.
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