PCSAT SIX MONTHS STATUS REPORT                          9 April 2002
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At the end of March, PCsat completed 6 months of successful operations.
Although poor solar incidence angle required PCsat to be placed in
lower power mode with user access disabled for 3 weeks beginning on
18 March, she returned to normal operations on 6 April.  The following
details categorize the success and lessons learned from the first
mission of the USNA Small Satellite Program.


MISSION SUMMARY:  Following a successful launch on 29 Sept 2002, PCsat
has provided communication support to over XXXX users on all continents
(except maybe Greenland).  Its web pages have logged more than 120,000
hits.  In addition to the routine communications and tracking support
for typically 4 dozen stations per 24 hour period, PCsat has provided
specific support for the following events:

 - 100th anniversary Marconi trans-Atlantic communications demonstration
 - 18th annual Army/Navy game football run, Annapolis to Philadelphia.
 - New Zealand cross country treck
 - Melbourne ????
 - UK....
 - Carribean Ship tracking
 - USS Parcher (SSN-21) communications demonstration

DESIGN VALIDATION:  With no inflight failures other than the failure on
launch of the -Z solar array, many aspects of the PCsat design have been
validated.  These design features have performed well on orbit.

 - Off-the-shelf Terrestrial panels have shown no measureable degradation.
   With a cost of less than 2% of space rated cells, these cells are
   very cost effective for low cost and or short missions.
 - Magnetic stabalization of the Z axis yields predictible orientation
 - Photometric spin design is stable at 0.6 RPM giving thermal stability
 - Thermal equilibrium is within 3% and transients within 10% of predictions
 - Dual-redundant system with dual same-band outputs show no interference
 - Back-door RESET system has been used twice to recover from anomolies.
 - GPS works on orbit and has given accuracies within 1 km of SPG4

PRESENTATIONS and PAPERS:

 - AIAA/USU Small Satellite Conference
 - DIgital Communications Conference
 - 2001 Amateur Satelltie Symposium
 - Published in several HAM Radio magazines, 73, QEX, AMSAT Journal
 - Presentation at the National Teachers Congress 5 April 2002
 - Presentation at Princeton IEEE Student Chapter 4 April 2002
 - Presentation/Paper at ION 2002
 - National Air and Space Museum ISS IMAX opening

STUDENT PROJECTS, RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL USE:

 - Magnetic Stabalization model developed at Univ of Stellenbach, S.A.
 - Used in both introductory and 4th year Astro Labs at USNA





The only failure on PCsat was the -Z solar array
which failed on launch.  Actually, it had shown intermittant behavior 
several times during construction and integration, and was a konwn
high-risk item.  Since it was the only custom made panel, and there
were no flight spa




SUCCESSES:

1)
