We recently invited José Antonio Bagur to join us on EDUvision, to talk about his work on Quetzal-1; Guatemala’s first satellite. It was a hugely popular show with the Arduino and edutech communities, and we ran out of time before we could ask José all your space-based questions!
The range of questions you guys had around open-source, custom-built satellites were too good to go unanswered. So we brought him back for an EDUvision EXTRA. Melissa and Roxana teamed up to dig deeper into his amazing project.
José Antonio Bagur, and Quetzal-1
You can check out José’s first interview, which took place during the EDUvision livestream. But to quickly get you up to speed, let’s give José, and his pride and joy Quetzal-1, a quick introduction.
He’s a mechatronics engineer, university researcher and professor from Guatemala. He’s no stranger to the Arduino community either, as he regularly joins the Arduino team to host the Spanish-language Explore IoT webinars.
There are no formal aerospace science education programs in Guatemala, so José and his colleagues really had their work cut out designing and building the country’s first satellite! Over 100 people were involved in its development, which, of course, made plenty of use of Arduino.
In the EDUvision EXTRA video interview below, you can find out all about the incredible work they achieved. He talks about how they managed to get it into space, how it works, and what kind of challenges they faced throughout the project. Feel free to add any other questions you might have in the comments, over on the forum, or on social media.
Oh, and you’ll also find out where the name Quetzal-1 comes from!
Enjoy this extra slice of EDUvision goodness, and remember to join us on 20th May, 2021, for the next livestream. If you have a project you’d like to see featured live on EDUvision, let us know all about it. If it’s picked to be showcased, we’ll even send you some free Arduino swag.
GPS is a global technology these days, with the Russian GLONASS system and the forthcoming European Galileo orbiting alongside the original US GPS satellites above our heads. [Florin Duroiu] decided to embrace globalism by forking the TinyGPS library for the Arduino platform to add support for these satellite constellations.
In addition to the GLONASS support, the new version of the venerable TinyGPS adds some neat new features by incorporating the NEMA 3.0 standard (warning: big-ass PDF link). Using this, you can extract interesting stuff such as the calculated position from each satellite constellation, the signal strength of each satellite and a lot more technical stuff about what the satellites are saying about you to your GPS receiver. [Florin] claims it is a drop-in replacement for TinyGPS that should require no rewriting. There is no support for Galileo just yet (as the satellites are still being launched: eight are in orbit now), but [Florin] is looking for help to add this, as well as the new Chinese BEIDOU system once it is operational.
(top image: artists’ view of a Galileo satellite in orbit, courtesy of ESA)
The U of M Satellite project started in 2010 as a student group at the University of Manitoba with the goal of building a nano satellite (10 x 10 x 34 cm) and make space accessible to the public. We got in touch with Ahmed Byagowi, co-founder of the project, who teaches robotics in the same university. Ahmed told us that U of M Satellite became soon very popular, in fact more than 300 students joined the group. In the first iteration the satellite’s goal was studying a micro animal (about 1 mm) called tardigrades and see its behaviour in space. The second iteration started in 2012, the same year of the launch of the Arduino Due and that’s why they designed everything based on it.
We had a nice talk with Ahmed and asked a bit more about the project.
Why is space so important for research, and why it would be cool if more people could have access to it?
Space research is important because it challenges us to solve problems and find solutions which can translate to everyday life here on Earth. The products of space research and space technology are all around us today. From the ballpoint pen, all the way to GPS, special composite materials, special surgical equipment and satellite communication.
For a while, only government and military had access to space. However, over the past decade there has been a rapid increase in commercial and public access to space. Private companies can take risks that the government and military can not, which leads to even bolder and newer technologies being developed.
For the general public, there are many creative and dynamic thinkers in the world who may not be able to share their ideas through a government agency or company. Public access to space allows more people to innovate on their own terms, and with 7 billion people on this planet, surely there are a great deal of innovation to be found.
With more people involved in researching space technologies, even more ideas can reach fruition, which can hopefully lead to technologies that will benefit life here on Earth even more.
There are other open source projects going to space (i.e. Ardusat), how’s U of M Student Satellite different or similar to others?
Ardusat is using Arduino as its payload (in fact, 16 of them) to run certain experiments in space and its main controller system is based on other processors and software. On the other hand, UMSATS’ satellite is going to be based on the Arduino Due architecture (the main controller) aided by the Arduino Zero and Arduino Uno’s design for payload and other controllers such as attitude determination and control system (ADCS) and power management as well as onboard image processing.
In which way open source is making exploration of space possible?
Open source makes things more accessible and helps a community work together to solve problems. If more open source platforms become available that can aid in space exploration, people can focus their efforts more on the next big problem using tools already developed, instead of resolving the same problems over and over again (reinventing the wheel). Plus, learning from watching other people’s work is a great way to learn things and apparently for some people like me or Massimo, this is best way to learn programming (based on Massimo’s TED talk).
Could you give us a bit more details on how you are using Arduino DUE ?
Our main Command and Data Handling (CDH) controller is based on the SAM3X8E and we are using Arduino Due’s bootloader and IDE for the software development. We added some more software layers as well as a scheduler and we aim to open source the entire software and hardware as soon as possible. In the picture of our motherboard below, you can clearly see the SAM3X8E and on the top right, there is a SMD version of the ATMEGA328P running and Arduino Uno core and acts as the beacon transmitter. This board encompasses the CDH, ADCS, Power and Communication of 2 meter and 70 cm bands (144.390MHz and 435MHz ham radio bands).
A famous quote of Massimo’s Banzi says: “You don’t need anyone’s permission to make something great” and in your TED talk you start saying “You can make big things using small tools”, what’s the relations between the two?
There is no formula for greatness. We live in a time where anything is truly possible, and the way to achieve your goals is numerous. Nobody said we couldn’t do something big with our small satellite, and we didn’t ask if we could either. Instead, we try to do big things with small tools that are accessible to us.
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