The Delfi-C³ Nanosatellite
Miscellaneous ramblings about a small thing in space...
Although it might not seem like a "big thing", measuring only 10 x 10 x 30 cm, it sure is a big ting to me. It has taken over some years of my life. What? The Delfi-C³ Nanosatellite. On this page I try to keep adding info and write up some of the memories I have. Launch Day has been such a blur that I keep remembering stuff I did not notice before.
My involvement:
I graduated for the Bachelor of Engineering degree on the Local Oscillator (LO) design of Delfi-C³ and continued working on various parts of the radio and assisted with assembly of the satellite.
Currently I'm one of the members of the Delfi-C³ Command Team (DC3CT), the others being Wouter Jan Ubbels (PE4WJ) and Gerard Aalbers. Also I keep things up and running at the Delfi-C³ ground station.
16th of April 2009, Delfi-C3 on television
Approximately 1.5 year ago, the Dutch childrens TV show "Klokhuis" filmed the integration and vibration testing of Delfi-C3. Today, they aired the show. View it here (in dutch)
28th of April 2008, Launch Day!
Maybe the most rewarding day in my life so far! 28th of April 03:53 UTC, 2.2kg of various metals and semiconductors roared to space on a Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
Delfi-C³ was released into its orbit and began operating right after it was released. The first to receive Delfi-C3 was Rick Mann in the United States at 06:45 UTC. He recorded the sound of Delfi-C3 and send us the recording via E-mail. Listen to his recording here
After Rick had received Delfi-C3 we gave it a go at our own ground station and heared... well.......nothing. At 11:55 UTC the satellite signal was acquired and decoded at the TU Delft ground station. Delfi had come up on the secondary radio and our Kepler data was not up to date. you can imagine how glad we all were when we heard the first sounds out of our own radios!. Below is a movie of this event.
more to follow...
Presentations
Below are links to PDF files of presentation I gave at various occasions. I think we all know how to handle PDF files...
Local
Presentation about mission results given at the annual AMSAT UK Colloquium, 2009
Local
Mirror
Presentation for VERON Twente, English
Local
Mirror
Presentation about the LO Design, given at the Amsat-UK colloquium 2008, English
Local
Mirror
Presentation for VERON Friese Wouden, converted to English
© All presentations and artwork contained in the files is copyright by Wouter Weggelaar and/or The Delfi-C3 Team. If you would like to use these works or part of it please let me know. pa3weg [at] Amsat [dot] org
Ground Station
The Delfi-C3 ground station consists of a redundant set-up of two radio stations. It is located at the top (22th) floor EWI building of Delft University of Technology, 85m Above Sea Level.
We use the following hardware:
| Transceiver: | ICOM IC-910H |
| Antenna 2m: | M2 2MCP14 |
| Antenna 70cm: | M2 436CP30 |
| Rotators: | Yaesu G-5500 |
| TNC downlink: | Soundcard demodulator and RASCAL |
| TNC uplink: | Custom TNC |
Spare hardware is also available to be able to switch malfunctioning hardware quickly. This hardware also doubles as testing hardware for in the clean room and electronics lab.
more about Delfi-C³ can be found on delfic3.nl
Last modification on: 23 Feb 2016. File: Delfi-C3/delfic3.php