The Telecommunications Club meeting of HTE’s Telecommunications Section will be held in Budapest on 24 September 2009. The exact time of the event organized by the Telecommunications Section of the Scientific Association for Telecommunications and Informatics (HTE) is: 24 September 2009, from 6 PM to 8 PM. Venue: Informatics Club, Building “I” of BME (Budapest XI., Magyar tudósok krt. 2.).

Moderator and host

• Dr. Előd Both (Hungarian Space Office)

Planned opening speakers

• János Solymosi (Bonn Hungary Kft.): The technological issues of space research
• Zoltán Kovács (Masat): The present and future the Masat project
• Levente Dudás (Masat): Main units of Masat

New sponsors have joined the project in the last few months, so we have updated the Sponsors page.

We proudly announce that the negotiations for launching Masat-1 were closed successfully. We have received the signed contract on Tuesday, 25. August 2009.

According to the agreement our satellite will be launched to a ~700 km Sun Synchronous Orbit. This means that the satellite will orbit perpendicular to the equator, twice as high as the International Space Station (ISS).

The start is going to take place in India, but the exact date is not yet arranged. The company responsible for the launch services is looking for opportunities in Q2-Q4 2010.

The pictures are taken from the leaders signing the contract: (from left to right: Dr. László Vajta, dean; Abe R. Bonnema and Eddie van Breukelen, leaders of the launch arranging company (ISIS); Dr. Márta Rencz, Head of Department EET; Dr. Lajos Nagy, Head of Department HVT)

We would like to say thank you for the Faludi Wolf Theiss Attorneys-at-Law and for dr. Fruzsina Tari, who provided space industry specific legal advices.

Currently we are working on an own software, which is capable of simulating the motion of Masat-1 in space. For example, we are able to determine to which direction it turns during its orbital motion under the influence of the magnetic field of Earth. That is, because we are going to place a small magnet onboard acting as a compass, which would rotate the whole satellite, likewise the antenna, to a suitable direction for the communication. During the next weeks we are going to develop and simulate how we could use the onboard sensors to determine the direction of the antenna relative to the Earth, and how we could reorient it to an arbitrary direction, turning on the electromagnetic coils generating additional magnetic field.

We have received the new CAD design software sponsored by EADS Astrium GmbH. and Infoterra Hungary Kft. The licenses has just been activated on all PC-s in the Hardware design laboratory and in the Radio Club of BME. Currently we are using these software for the Masat-1 development, but they will be involved in the education from 2010.