Just found out about this, totally by accident, at the BAUT forum!

http://cubesat.wikidot.com/

I will endeavour to find out more, and see if there's anything I can do to help (which will be nothing, probably)

I disagree. What a terrific additional subject for some of your local space talks! I'm sure that they'd appreciate improved public awareness of the project.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7461868.stm - even made the local news

Well, hell, then, go talk to them & get those kids signed up for UMSF! I'm sure we'd all love to hear the war stories as they get their baby ready to go... (Got a funny feeling that they just might do some valuable networking here for their future careers, too, don't know why... )

i think they should win a prize for the acronym alone!

For those who, like me, couldn't quite pick it up from the video:
PLUME (Picosatellite of Leicester University Micrometeoroid Experiment)

I'm the guy on the team for PLUME (personally I didn't vote for that particular acronym, it is a bit clumsy isn't it?) who let djellison know about it on BAUT. In the clip, I am the tard going on about not getting hair in the satellite whilst he has bits of hair sticking out of his clean room suit. Nobody saw fit to tell me at the time

The animation was put together in a bit of a hurry because we didn't have much notice about the BBC coming to visit. Any help on that would of course be appreciated.

Well, hey, Spider, welcome! Good luck of course with PLUME, and any updates you can provide to us would be greatly appreciated!

I couldn't help it. Last night I got home, grabbed the 1U Cubesat Kit cad-file, bolted some arrays onto it, some antennae - and hit render

http://www.dougellison.com/?p=24

There you go; that's definitely helping them! It's great, they'll love it!!!

You need one tailored to the East Midlands.
How about Micrometeorite Experiment Deploying University Controlled Kg Satellite or MEDUCKS for short.
(Apologies to those as yet unexposed to the linguistic peculiarities of this region - after 14 years I've still not fully got my head round it )

Sorry I've not returned here in a while; I have been in Florida for a bit (saw KSC, pretty inspiring stuff for someone making a cubesat!)

djellison, that animation looks pretty damn nice. I think it would be great for you to work with us, and I'll get in touch with you about that via email (I have your address I think).

Oh, and unfortunately we cannot change the acronym at this point

KSC, you say? Wow! Never been myself, and I'm a Yank (inexcusable, I know....)

How are you guys doing? What stage are you at (i.e., systems integration, test, whatever)?

Well, personally I've been out of the loop for a little while (they university employed some cubesat people over the summer, but got arsey with me because I had already booked a holiday, so I went off to do a job in cancer research instead) but from talking to them, they haven't quite got to systems integration yet largely because some of the systems fell behind due to people leaving. The hardware we have is for OBDH (on board data handling) and we also have the ADS (attitude determination system) up and running. I believe the dust detector itself may also be ready for integration, but I am not sure.

Got it. Life happens.

How does the ADS work on something that small, anyhow? You guys using gyros or one of the odd modern variants (vyros, interferometric rate sensors, etc.), a minature INS, or maybe GPS?

We use magnetometers, and a computer map of the Earths magnetic field. Fortunately, at the altitudes we will be at, it doesn't change quickly enough to give us too many problems with this approach. We hope.

Term has started again, so things will be moving fast now. I can keep you informed if anyone is still interested.

Yes! Please do. I'm looking forward to reading about your progress

What a great university project! Please, keep us up to date

Of course we're still interested !

The project has benefited from the paid work done during the summer break. Substantial progress has been made on several subsystems, and this combined with an influx of new freshers has given me fresh enthusiasm for the mission (I was previously having doubts, for long and complicated reasons). We are making tentative steps

Our main issue right now is the payload. On OBDH we are currently working out an automated power up routine for a a subsystem that requires high voltages applied very carefully, and has to be quickly shut off if (or perhaps when) it shows signs of melting. The payload team themselves are working on getting the thing small enough to fit in the cubesat (and although like I said I don't know much, the high voltages I was talking about are giving some headaches - we need a transformer somewhere and our mass and volume budget doesn't allow for a big stonking lump of iron)

I have presented Dougs offer of media-related help to the management, they are of course interested but right now are more focused on technical issues. Nobody is asking to do a story about us at this very minute anyway so having good animations isn't yet necessary.

We hope to deliver by summer next year, for launch some months afterwards. The management seem to have begun looking into getting us a space on a launcher, but of course once we book it we are locked into our delivery date and that already involves some quite tight deadlines. Much hard work ahead.