Two Ham Satellites Among Craft Lost in Launch Explosion
 |
| Video of liftoff and explosion at < http://bit.ly/AntaresExplosion > |
Two satellites carrying ham radio payloads were among more
than two dozen satellites lost in the October 28 launch failure of Orbital
Sciences Corporation's Antares 130 rocket. The rocket malfunctioned seconds
after launch from NASA's Wallops Island spaceport in Virginia and was destroyed
by the range safety officer in a spectacular explosion.
According to the ARRL Letter, the satellites aboard the
craft included two with amateur radio payloads -- the Radiometer Atmospheric
Cubesat Experiment (RACE) built jointly by the University of Texas at Austin
and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and GOMX-2, designed by Aalborg
University in Denmark.
GOMX-2 was to test a new de-orbiting system and
flight-qualify a new high-speed UHF transceiver and a software-defined receiver
built by Aalborg. It had a data downlink on 70 centimeters. RACE carried a new
183-GHz radiometer designed by JPL and had ham-band data and CW telemetry
downlinks on 70 centimeters. UT Engineering Professor Glen Lightsey, KE5DDG,
told the Letter, "It's unfortunate, but it is also part of the aerospace
industry." Watch video of the Antares explosion at <
