I am one member on a team of folks who have had our initial proposal for an ARISS contact sometime between Jan and June of 2016. The initial “marketing” proposal was accepted. The next step in the process is to have our technical proposal accepted as well.
ARISS requires a primary as well as a backup station with pretty robust RF requirements on both the RX and TX side — well in excess of what the normal link margin requirements would be. This is to accommodate a horizon-to-horizon contact (only about 10 minutes — ISS is in very low orbit), to overcome signal difficulties on the ISS end caused by less than ideal antenna locations and power output, and to ensure our signal is the strongest during the space station pass. It’s all pretty specialized and fairly expensive gear.
The good news was that our initial technical proposal was reviewed by our ARISS Technical Mentor this afternoon and was given an initial positive review. We need to add a high power amplifier and RX preamp to our backup station, and consider adding a RHCP-LHCP polarity switch to our primary station.
Hopefully we will have an approved proposal and move onto the scheduling step within the next few weeks.
