ERMINAZ mission postponed to 2025

On Monday evening, August 19, 2024, just a few weeks before the planned launch date of RFA One with the ERMINAZ payload, Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) conducted a “hot fire” test of the first rocket stage at its launch site at SaxaVord Spaceport on the Shetland Islands, during which all 9 engines were ignited.  Unfortunately, this resulted in a serious anomaly that led to the complete loss of the first rocket stage. Fortunately, no one was injured and the damage to the launch pad caused by the fire was not as dramatic as initially feared.    However, the repair work, fault analysis, qualification and delivery of a new first rocket stage will take some time, so that RFA now officially expects a launch in 2025.

AMSAT-DL was immediately informed about the further procedure. In a telephone conversation with our 1st Chairman Peter Gülzow, Jörn Spurmann, CCO and co-founder of RFA, expressed his regret for the inconvenience and foreseeable delays. Peter Gülzow replied that they had full confidence in RFA and its employees and that they shared the same spirit. The openness, transparency and speed of information from RFA are already setting new standards and the way they are dealing with what is happening gives us confidence. Space travel is hard, better now than later!

ERMINAZ payloads are ready for take-off

The UNNE-1, MARIA-G, SIDLOC-PQ-1, SIDLOC-PQ-1, QUBIK-5, ERMINAZ-1U and ERMINAZ-1V satellites are part of the Erminaz mission, a joint effort between AMSAT-DL, AMSAT-EA and the Libre Space Foundation, with each organization flying its own satellites and jointly using the PicoBus deployer developed by Libre Space in the ERMINAZ mission.

The mission management with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which awarded the launch and is also responsible for debris mitigation (reduction of space debris and the resulting hazards), the launch vehicle (Rocket Factory Augsburg) and the British CAA authority was carried out by AMSAT-DL as the signatory and responsible party for the launch contract on behalf of the aforementioned partners. The Civil Aviation Authority is a British authority that deals with civil aviation and aerospace matters in the UK. It examines all aspects of safety, from the financial “fitness” of AMSAT-DL and those responsible for it in person, to all technical details of the payloads and their behavior in orbit and re-entry, through to topics such as cyber security, legal and insurance issues. Appropriate authorizations, registrations and entries must also be submitted to the ITU, IARU and UNOOSA for all satellites. As “Chef de Mission”, Peter Gülzow oversees the entire process shortly after the launch contract was signed. With weekly consultations, these activities take many months before the CAA issues an “Orbital Operator License” at the end of the process, as we are launching from British soil. Hundreds of pages of documentation and forms had to be created and filled out, all very time-consuming. There is also a fixed license fee to pay at the end, which far exceeds the value of a single PocketQube! It should be noted that the license fee and the effort involved are completely independent of the size of the satellite. Whether a mini-satellite with a mass of 100 kg or a PocketQube with only a few hundred milligrams, both are treated equally and the time required is also identical. The satellite operators themselves are responsible for registering the frequencies with the respective national authority. In Germany, this is the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA), which has also assigned the call signs DP0SAT and DP1SAT for ERMINAZ-1U and ERMINAZ-1V respectively.

The news of the failed “hot fire” test of the first rocket stage hit the ERMINAZ team just as they were preparing for the final integration of all 7 satellites into the deployer at AMSAT-DL in Bochum. The teams from the Libre Space Foundation in Greece and AMSAT-EA in Spain had just arrived in Bochum when they were surprised by the news of the explosion of the first rocket stage in SaxaVord. Days before, the respective teams had already prepared their satellites for flight, loaded them with the latest flight software, tested them and fully charged the batteries. On Tuesday, August 20, the PocketQubes were to be integrated into the PicoBus deployer and transported to the SaxaVord launch site the very next day. However, we then decided to carry out the integration work as planned and deploy all the satellites in the deployer. This “integration fit check” enabled us to once again check the flight capability of ERMINAZ and the functionality of the deployer. However, the satellites were then removed again. The PicoBus deployer remains in Bochum and the teams from Spain and Greece have taken their payloads back home to use the time for further software updates and battery recharging, as a new launch date in 2025 is still open.

The payloads of the ERMINAZ mission

The UNNE-1 and MARIA-G 1.5P PocketQubes from AMSAT-EA in Spain are both based on the HADES-D (SO-121) hardware currently in orbit and provide a repeater service for voice and data communications in FM and FSK modes. They were developed and built by AMSAT-EA in collaboration with private sector companies and with the participation of universities and educational centers. Both satellites will provide licensed radio amateurs around the world with the ability to conduct FM and FSK QSOs, including FT modes such as FT-4 and FT-8 or AX.25/APRS. The satellites will also transmit telemetry with their status, voice messages and CW. Both satellites have the amateur radio special call sign AM1HAD.

UNNE-1 contains an Arduino-based board with software from the University of Nebrija in Madrid. The students have developed a small decoding game with a space story as a background. The satellite transmits a clue every week in its FSK telemetry so that radio amateurs can solve the task. This game is described in detail on the website of AMSAT-EA and the University of Nebrija.

MARIA-G also includes two CW reception games/challenges carried out by students from the María Guerrero high school in Collado Villalba, also in the Madrid region. One of the games involves obtaining the coordinates of an important place on Earth (e.g. a city, a monument, etc.) and the other involves obtaining a code corresponding to a scientific question. There will be a separate website for both games.

MARIA-G also includes a small experiment for IoT via satellite developed by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Research Center in Germany. This is a proof of concept for the transmission of a TS-UNB (Telegram Splitting Multiple Access) waveform from low Earth orbit, a technology specified in the ETSI-TS-103-357 standard and used in MIOTY. According to AMSAT-EA, this is exclusively a research and development project with no commercial intentions. Mioty is a wireless LPWAN technology with the ability to query a large number of Internet-of-Things nodes over long ranges. The purpose of the TS-UNB waveform used in MARIA-G, and the software library available for the transmission part, is for academic and non-commercial use. Furthermore, the TS-UNB-Lib is not identical and at the same quality level as the commercially licensed MIOTY software. The transmission frequency coordinated by the IARU is 436.235 MHz.

QUBIK-5 is another PocketQube in the Libre Space Foundation’s QUBIK series and will conduct a series of amateur radio telecommunications experiments while attempting to exploit Doppler variations through ground station analysis of received signals to perform orbit determination and satellite identification by radio amateurs around the world. The telecommunication experiments will use different modulation, coding and framing schemes to gain insights into their performance in nano-pico satellite missions. SIDLOC (Spacecraft Identification and Localization) PQ-1 and PQ-2 are two Libre Space Foundation projects funded by the European Space Agency as part of the ARTES programme. The aim of these PocketQubes is to create a proposed standard for the identification and localization of satellites and spacecraft. This is done via a radio-transmitted scheme in conjunction with an open-source software and hardware implementation of the SIDLOC standard on appropriately allocated frequencies in the 401 MHz range. SIDLOC was first flown on board the maiden flight of Ariane 6 and corresponding experience from real flight conditions has also been incorporated into SIDLOC-PQ-1 and PQ-2.

ERMINAZ-1U and ERMINAZ-1V are the two PocketQubes of the AMSAT-DL, which are based on the open source QUBIK standard and have been extended by a sensor board. Further modifications were also made to the antennas and the software, which are available as open source or are included in the QUBIK software repository. The sensor board includes a Teviso BG51 radiation sensor with PIN diodes suitable for measuring beta, gamma and X-ray radiation in orbit. We are trying to learn more about the radiation environment. Also on the sensor board is an IMU with a total of 9 degrees of freedom (DOF), consisting of a BNO085 sensor from CEVA/Hillcrest Laboratories. This IMU actually comes from Bosch Sensortec as BNO055. Thanks to an agreement between Bosch and Hillcrest, the BNO085 uses the same hardware but a very different firmware with additional sensor fusion and signal processing features. In satellite telemetry, measured values include the acceleration vector of the 3-axis accelerometer, angular velocity vector (gyro) as rotational speed in 3-axis and a 3-axis magnetometer for attitude detection. Experience with the IMU should be useful for future projects in which active attitude control, e.g. using a magnetorquer, is also to be used.

A 2m and a 70cm antenna are required for each of the two ERMINAZ satellites. For mechanical reasons, only a dipole antenna can be considered. The original QUBIK design uses a stretched dipole, but its directional pattern is problematic and can lead to very strong fading due to pronounced nulls. When the satellite rotates, it can happen that, depending on its position in space, a 30dB minimum is passed through twice per rotation. With an awkward ratio of frame length and speed, this can make any communication impossible, as has already happened in other projects. We have therefore decided to use a V-dipole whose two legs are at 100 degrees to each other. This improves the situation in several respects and in particular the low minima are largely reduced, which should massively reduce fading. ERMINAZ-1U and ERMINAZ-1V use these V-dipoles for the first time in a PocketQube. With a leg length of 290mm each, the 2m antenna still poses a particular challenge in terms of deployment after launch.

ERMINAZ-1U and ERMINAZ-1V will also carry out a series of telecommunications experiments in the amateur radio range using various modulation, coding and framing schemes.  In addition to a CW beacon, SSDV is also planned for digital image transmission, the images of which are stored on a micro SD card and transmitted cyclically. The aim here is to gather long-term experience with SD cards under space conditions. In addition to telemetry in the CCSDS standard, a CCSDS digipeater is also implemented so that radio amateurs can also communicate directly via the two ERMINAZ PocketQubes, although this is not AX.25 compatible.  

Another aim of ERMINAZ-1U and -1V is to introduce and involve students from Bochum University of Applied Sciences in our space projects, in collaboration with Bochum Observatory. A novelty in Bochum that has already met with great enthusiasm at the university!

 

Cheers to European cooperation

Finally, we at AMSAT-DL would like to thank not only our own team, but also especially for the excellent cooperation with all those involved, both the Libre Space Foundation, AMSAT-EA with its partners from universities and Hydra Space, IUZ/Sternwarte Bochum, as well as the Rocket Factory Augsburg, DLR, BNetzA, CAA and many others involved in the ERMINAZ project.

Let’s look at it with one eye crying and one eye laughing. As Dr. Stefan Brieschenk, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Rocket Factory Augsburg, said, a lot of effort was made and no expense spared to deliver spectacular fireworks. On the other hand, as Elon Musk said: “If there are no failures, then the project was not innovative enough. Failures are an option if you learn from them! We will bridge the waiting time until a new launch date with full confidence in Rocket Factory Augsburg and commitment. There is still a lot to do and we will make the most of the time until then. We have already gained a lot of experience from the ERMINAZ project for the future.

Small satellite ground segment in Bochum

Meanwhile, work is also continuing on the ground station for ERMINAZ and other projects at the observatory in Bochum. In addition to the well-known deep space activities of AMSAT-DL and Bochum Observatory with the 20-meter parabolic antenna, there is also a great need here to receive and, if necessary, command small satellites, CubeSats and PocketQube satellites in LEO. A corresponding Mission Control Center is currently being set up. We have been operating the DK0SB SatNOGS station with omnidirectional antennas (Eggbeater) on VHF and UHF in the 2m and 70cm amateur radio satellite range for several years now. Also APT and LRPT weather image reception on 137 MHz using a dedicated antenna and the SatDump software. The time at the edge of the integration was also used to lay almost 300m of coax cable, as well as control lines and Ethernet cables. The powerful azimuth and elevation rotor was installed and all cables were laid in the mast. Pre-amplifiers and antennas were procured and bolted together. Some of the mounts had to be specially made or adapted. Somewhere along the line, theory and practice sometimes diverge, and that’s when things have to be done. In short, physical exercise, in addition to all the mental work, is always part of the job at AMSAT and, in addition to headaches, can sometimes result in severe lumbago.

Author: Peter Gülzow, AMSAT-DL, September 1, 2024