Refining Ground Sphere testing schedule

Added by J. Simmons over 10 years ago

Greetings everyone,

Greg and I have been talking about how to go about getting the Ground Sphere tested in light of the general lack of operational satellites broadcasting on 915 MHz. I think we worked out a pretty good plan and I wanted to share it with you. It is based around using the one operational satellite we are aware of, which only broadcasts when it is over its control station in LA. It turns out, I have a good friend from work who lives in LA and I think would be willing (and is certainly able) to test the Ground Sphere. Of course, that would require shipping the ground station to him for testing, so we need to adjust the build schedule some, as you will see below.

  • J finds out on Monday if his friend is available to help with the testing and looks at when the satellite will actually be flying over LA during the testing window
  • Move up the completion date of Prototype 1 to 10/23 (this mostly affects Aaron)
  • Ship Prototype 1 to LA on 10/23
  • J's friend in LA conducts operational tests of the Ground Sphere from 10/26 to 11/1
  • J's friend ships Prototype 1 to Tim for space tweet testing (can Prototype 1 demonstrate reception and decoding of tweets sent from the SkyCube engineering model?) on 11/1
  • Tim tests space tweet capabilities with Prototype 1 (in lab and with some separation between satellite model and Prototype 1) 11/1 - 11/8

At this point, we basically return to our current schedule, with the note that by the time Prototype 2 is ready for testing, we are assuming the two new NPS cubesats are on orbit and broadcasting so Aaron can conduct additional operational tests using Prototype 2 and the NPS satellites


Replies (4)

RE: Refining Ground Sphere testing schedule - Added by Aaron Harper over 10 years ago

This time scale is a little too aggressive, but I like the basic concept. I expect to have the parts to build the preamp on Mon or Tues (28th or 29th of October) and should have prototype 1 done by the end of the week. To expedite prototype 2, I will order another preamp and build a second prototype immediately upon receipt of parts to merge back to our regular schedule.

RE: Refining Ground Sphere testing schedule - Added by J. Simmons over 10 years ago

Yeah, the schedule was set before I knew about the delay in getting the preamp for Prototype 1. Is there an alternate preamp we can use in testing for Prototype 1, so you can use the one that is already on order for Prototype 2? Preferably something more local so we won't have any shipping problems?

I also want to check about something you mentioned to me about testing at 22 Km? Tim and I have discussed our shared concern that we not proceed with development until we get several good tests from on orbit (including moving on to Prototype 2). But, are there tests we can reasonable run before shipping Prototype 1 to CA? Especially ones which will exercise comparable signal reception?

RE: Refining Ground Sphere testing schedule - Added by J. Simmons over 10 years ago

Before we update the testing schedule (again sighs), I think we should get a more detailed test plan down on "paper". I have started a draft test plan on the wiki on the Testing page. Note, much of it is still blank (we can come back to this later), the important bits right now are to

  1. Complete the list of required tests for prototype 1 by testing facility (development shop - aka Aaron's house, LA with my friend, and Southern Stars)
  2. Document the steps for each prototype 1 test (we can come back and work on the other tests later)

Please leave comments below.

RE: Refining Ground Sphere testing schedule - Added by Aaron Harper over 10 years ago

Agreed. Much of this was banged out on the 05DEC Engineer Speak hangout and we'll get the rest on today's hangout at 1400MST 07DEC.

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