[Ground-station] Phase 5? Invite to conference, open source payload

[Michelle Thompson]

Ok so far I have "here is my design for Mercury or Bust fundraiser
t-shirts" and "what do you have against Venus" and "we could use
thermocouples for power".

Focus people. There aren't any hams on Mercury. We'd have to get a VE team
there first.

Spread the word and ask around. I'll put together a conference call within
the next few weeks.



On Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 10:17 Michelle Thompson <mountain.michelle at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Steve Conklin asked Barbara Cohen about what our next steps for Phase 4
> Space should be, and she recommended taking a serious look at attending
> this meeting:
>
> https://cubesats.gsfc.nasa.gov/symposium.html
>
> We have an opportunity consider planetary or Phase 5 work. We are being
> encouraged to think about it and come up with proposals.
>
> I've talked with a lot of people over the past week from a wide variety of
> organizations, all of whom have been positive and encouraging. We  are
> negotiating funding sources that will make a payload possible, and we
> received an offer for radiation testing. More progress on this has happened
> in the past week than in the prior six months. Let's try and capitalize on
> this.
>
> I want to support and enable an open source payload that uses our air
> interface (FDM up, DVB-S2/X + GSE down).
>
> We won't be the first open source satellite in orbit. That honor belongs
> to UPSat, from Libre Space.
>
> I am not interested in seeing us at LEO. No we don't have to do something
> interplanetary. The baseline to date has been 6U GEO. Several existing
> designs have provided some framework, and there's discussion of a drawing.
>
> What do we need to do now? We need additional people. We have a small
> payload team right now. We do need more.
>
> We need someone that is not me to lead it. It is a big job, but not
> impossible. I have asked some wonderful people that have recently become
> free, and am interested in recommendations from all of you.
>
> If I lead it, we build a spacecraft to go do amateur radio around Mercury.
> See, you want someone a bit less gonzo. I will provide support to the best
> of my abilities, but someone not pied pipering off to Mercury has to be out
> there. :+)
>
> Questions? Comments? As always, the floor is yours.
>
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