FELIX PAEZ. PRESIDENT, AMSAT-EA
Félix Páez is the current President of AMSAT Spain (AMSAT EA) a non-profit ham radio association dedicated to the study, promotion and development of satellites for Amateur Radio Service, as well as the educational, scientific and experimental work associated with it. Computer engineer by the Spanish Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and radio amateur with callsign EA4GQS, he has set up, with the help of some Universities and the support of some companies, three pocketqube satellite projects: GENESIS, EASAT-2 and Hades, all to be launched in 2020.
Presentation Synopsis:
‘HADES and EASAT-2: A versatile pocketQube platform’
Hades and EASAT-2 satellites are the new iterations of the GENESIS platform, first tested with the N/L twin 1.5P PocketQubes. This novel implementation supports communications and navigation services, thanks to the development of a custom transponder relay system, with Store&Forward capabilities. The Link Budget has been carefully designed to support connectivity with the Internet of Things and amateur radio APRS network.
Beyond their particular applications, the proposed platform stands out in low cost constellations with low revisit times. This is achieved through the use of automotive quality components, arranged in careful designed configurations that allow isolation and recovery from failures. Redundancy is implemented at several levels, featuring graceful degradation, without duplicating subsystems, and at full satellite level.
Moreover, despite its reduced size, the platform is able to accommodate a wide variety of experiments and payloads. The current implementation of this platform for HADES and EASAT-2 supports communications between radio-amateurs through the regenerative relay or mailbox, that features simple message exchange capabilities.