TJREVERB Spacecraft

Educational training and amateur radio communications.

Full duplex UHF/VHF uplink transceiver provided by AMSAT, and will assist students in learning the components of a working satellite, evaluating multiple communication methods, developing communication methodologies, and managing workflow.

TJHSST’s second satellite, the Thomas Jefferson Research and Education Vehicle for Radio Broadcasts (TJREVERB), is a 2U CubeSat that began as a student-initiated research project in 2016. Its goals are to test the performance of an Iridium 9602N Short Burst Data modem as a communications system for satellites with a SATT4 APRS backup radio, to produce documentation about how high school CubeSat organizations can best operate, and to educate the next generation of engineers and leaders in aerospace.

Components of TJREVERB are a mix of space-grade hardware, such as a Clyde Space Electrical Power System; Commercial Off-The-Shelf hardware, such as the Raspberry Pi Zero flight computer; and custom components, such as the flight computer’s interface board.

TJREVERB was designed to use the Iridium network as its primary mode of communication. For Iridium, the ground station is internet-based and exists solely in software: sending, receiving, and parsing emails to the Iridium service. Each email received from the Iridium service includes an attached message, along with details such as geolocation, time, transaction status, and size. TJREVERB’s Iridium ground station consisted of a backend script that parses received emails and stores data in an online Firebase database, and a frontend website that reads and updates from the database. Along with parsing and sending emails, the ground station handles encoding string commands to bytes and decoding incoming bytes to strings and numerical data.

• EPS - Clyde Space

• DANTESat
• HSKSAT
• LORIS
• NutSat
• OPTIMAL-1
• ORCA2Sat
• SS-1
• MARIO
• PetitSat
• SPORT
• TJREVERB
• Astrocast 17
• Astrocast 18
• Astrocast 19
• Astrocast 20
• Thybolt-1
• Thybolt-2