Sometimes a seeing the same boring boot sequence with embedded linux can get dull. Well, an easy fix is to find the MOTD (Message Of The Day) file and edit it. Aquire some ASCII art and voila! You have a customized boot-up welcome message, adding +5 to all geek-skills.

Just thought i’d link the concept videos of the CAPE Mechanical Design, created by our Mechanical team:

An Exploded view and assembly of the CAPE-2 Satellite.

Experimental Video of including Deployable Solar Panels on CAPE-2

Keep on the look out for more videos in the coming days!

-Rizwan Merchant

Well this past week has been pretty eventful for CAPE, with two major events. The first of which was Nick and I presenting the Sputnik Lite slideshow to a group of teachers attending a conference on Education on UL Campus, and launching a version of Sputnik Lite, which I call PartySat I, given that we’re using party balloon. Below are some pictures from the presentation and launch.

Nick Presenting the Sputnik Lite Project

A Volunteer Teacher pointing the Antennae in the direction of where we’re releasing PartySat.

and there she goes into the skies….

We’re not entirely certain just yet what happened to PartySat, but if you happen across a small transceiver attached to remains of four party sized balloons, please contact us.  Data from the launch will be up in a few days.

In other news, last night Matthew Triche, Dustin Muse, Blake Deville and I went to the Red Cross Center in Scott, and took our Technician’s Ham Operator Exam, and we all passed.  So just a quick congratulations to everyone!

Sputnik Lite: Teaching Science With Balloons

In addition to building satellites, Nick and students from CAPE are actively seeking future satellite builders and engineers even in elementary schools.  One method of reaching these students and getting them involved in science is through the Sputnik Lite balloon launch.  A small radio transmitter is attached to a helium filled party balloons and released.  The transmitter then sends down pulses of RF to relay temperature information to a groundstation.  Students then decode the temperature information to observe the changes in temperature over altitude.

Temperature vs. Altitude of a Balloon

Nick’s presentation and spreadsheet are available here:

• balloon-sputnik-light-09-06-02.pptx
  
• balloon-09-06-03-0623.xls

Recently members of the CAPE team traveled to San Luis Obispo, California to visit the California Polytechnic State and attend the 6th Annual Cubesat Developer’s Workshop. The group consisted of Matthew Barousse, Trey Olivier, Taylor Maronge, Dustin Meyers, Rizwan Merchant and Nick Pugh.  The trip was a great success, and a lot was accompliced from Matt and Trey’s presentation on the Applications of a Software Defined Radio in Space, and the amount of knowledge the team as a whole learned from the different teams in attendence.  Below are some photos taken at the conference, and trip in general.

Matt and Trey presenting their presentation.

Group Photo of the CAPE team at CalPoly. Left to right: Trey Oliver, Rizwan Merchant, Taylor Maronge,  Matthew Barousse, Dustin Meyer, Nick Pugh

Picture of us driving down the coastline back to Los Angeles after the conference.

On behalf of the C.A.P.E., I would like to thank the Calpoly team for an awesome conference, and hope to see them next year for the 7th Annual Cubesat Developer’s Workshop!

-Rizwan Merchant