News Clyde Space: has secured a funding package worth £1m

[Notebook]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-12334344

The company produces high-quality, high-performance systems for very small spacecraft called "CubeSats".

Got a credit-card, buy a CubeSat!

http://www.clyde-space.com/cubesat_shop

N.

 

[GoForPDI]

Great to see a space company so close to home!

 

[Notebook]

Indeed, its good to see any space company in the UK, more the merrier! Hadn't heard of these before, nice site. If I win the Lottery, I may but in for a ground station and worry my negbours.

N.

 

[NukeET]

Good name for a space company. But, you see, I'm biased. My last name is Clyde.

 

[Notebook]

Excellent, do you get a share of the money...?

N.

 

[GoForPDI]

''Clyde'' is in reference to the River Clyde, the river that runs through Glasgow. It was once the worlds best place to have your Ships built, now it looks like the Ships which once went up and down the Clyde could be replaced with Spacecraft

 

[NukeET]

Excellent, do you get a share of the money...?


N.

Unfortunately, no. :facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:

''Clyde'' is in reference to the River Clyde, the river that runs through Glasgow. It was once the worlds best place to have your Ships built, now it looks like the Ships which once went up and down the Clyde could be replaced with Spacecraft

Yeah, I knew that.

From their website:

Clyde Space is named after the River Clyde, the main river running through Glasgow. At one point in the past, 25% of all of the World's ships were made on the River Clyde; in the future, perhaps the Clyde will be equally successful building spaceships ...

 

[Notebook]

Coming from the North-East of England, of course I'd disagree about who built the best iron ships...Tyneside had quite a record, better beer too.

Steel and shipbuilding
The valley of the River Derwent, a major tributary of the Tyne that rises in County Durham, saw the development of the steel industry from around 1600 onwards. This was led by German immigrant cutlers and sword-makers, probably from around Solingen, who fled from religious persecution at home and settled in the then village of Shotley Bridge, near Consett.
The combination of coal and steel industries in the area was the catalyst for further major industrial development in the 19th century, including the shipbuilding industry — at its peak, the Tyneside shipyards were the one of the largest centres of shipbuilding in the world, and built an entire navy for Japan in the first decade of the 20th century. There is still a working shipyard in Wallsend.

Too much irony in there to comment on, especially the last sentence.

N.

 

[GoForPDI]

please say that pun (too much irony) was not intended!

 

[Notebook]

I'm afraid it was, there are no depths I will not stoop too. Including bad grammar spelling and dodgy metaphors.

N.

 

[beamrider]

About Clyde Space and UKube-1 cubesat

I took a look at some payloads proposed for UKube-1. I am not impressed. Especially Clyde Space came with a proposal that has been in the mind of any cubesat designer since they appeared in history. You can buy from the market a High/Medium Resolution Camera and put it inside the satellite without much effort. The big issue is how is Clyde Space envisioning a high data rate radio link, on board UKube-1, capable to send such pictures in a reasonable amount of time (for instance 5 minutes). Is UKube-1 capable of sustained 112 000 bps data rates in order to be able to transmit a 3 Mbytes image in 5 minutes?! I have serious doubts.

"High Quality Imaging Payload from UKATC/Clyde Space Ltd" ??!!

The table: Summary of cubesat transmitters containing communication speed and total amount of data transmitted to earth, shows that data rates are small (most of them 1200 bps) and even those which are bigger were not able to transmit more than 250 M in 7 Months (equivalent of 83 images, 3 Mbytes each).

 

[Notebook]

Fastest data link I can find is this:

http://www.clyde-space.com/cubesat_...tx/transceivers/178_s-band-transmitter?page=2

Any reason you think why they can't achieve this in practice? Should give the data rate you want.

N.

 

[Wishbone]

With a very high gain ground antenna (and no rain, and at high elevation angles) this would be possible, right? Also, what about xmitting to a relay (possibly optically) and having it downlink the images?

 

[beamrider]

Fastest data link I can find is this:
http://www.clyde-space.com/cubesat_...tx/transceivers/178_s-band-transmitter?page=2
Any reason you think why they can't achieve this in practice? Should give the data rate you want.
N.

S-Band TransmitterPart number: TXS
Cost: £7,759.34
ISIS 38400bps S-band Transmitter...
Data rates: Up to 115 kbps ...
Power Consumption: 2W ...
Available from: 2009 Q4

The transmitter is 38.4 kbps or 115 kbps?
2W is the necessary of power for 38.4 kbps or 115 kbps?
2W is an enormous power for a cubesat. Most of them can not rely on more than 1.5 W for all the systems on board not just the transmitter.
Even 115 kbps is too low for 3 Mbytes images because the windows of opportunity over UK totalizes no more than 15 minutes a day. At this data rate you need one day to download just three pictures.

 

[Notebook]

From the data page.

The TXS is a transmitter module designed specifically for nano-satellite application. It is compatible with the CubeSat standard and the CubeSatKit bus and standard CubeSat structures. The TXS transmitter works at S-band frequencies of 2100 MHZ to 2500 MHz. TXS can handle data rate transmission up to 115 kbps, while featuring a low power consumption. The TXS transmitter supports BPSK, QPSK, and GMSK modulation schemes.

I'm guessing here, but it says data rate up to 115kbps, and the 2W power consumption may be a peak value. The modulation types shown are all SK(Shift Keying), the transmitter switches between two states. That should be very efficient, and I would expect the average power consumption to be a lot less than 2W.
I'm not an RF Engineer, but I know a man who is, so I'll ask about this. Unfortunately, he's off to Australia for a month, so that may take some time!

Re the image transmission, well, thats the way it is! With that data rate you aren't going to get real-time high definition pictures(bummer).
But thats not what cube-sats are for, are they? I get the impresion they are for University projects and a start into space technology. Encouraging people to come up with new ideas and working to a budget and system limitations?

EDIT:
Good page here about radiated RF power ratios.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm"]dBm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

The data page gives "RF output power : Up to 30 dBm ", so I'd take that to be a maximum of 1W.


N.

 

[kuddel]

The data page gives "RF output power : Up to 30 dBm ", so I'd take that to be a maximum of 1W.

I'm not an RF Engineer either, but I had to learn some of this stuff during my Higher Education...and therfore I can say:
Don't confuse output power (transmitted energy) with input-power (the power you need to run the amplifiers etc.).
The ratio can be very "bad"...General rule of thumb: The higher the frequency, the worse the ratio. As far as I remember the conversion-efficiency of a transmitter is something between 30%-80%(*)

/Kuddel

(*) Don't qoute me on that It has been some time since I learned this

 

[Wishbone]

Did a quick calculation, the total link loss with a sat overhead the UK comes to 148 dB 90% of the year (rough figures, assuming 2.5 GHz, 300 km orbit). Also have got another absurd idea, (you have to put up with amateurs ) will formation flight (3-5 cubesats instead of 1) allow greater throughput? (I assume there are enough Rx dishes on the ground).