SUNSAT participated in the YEAST (Year of Science and Technology) at the Waterfront in Cape Town in March and will aslo be at the Grahamstown Science Festival from 26 March. Calibration of the magnetometers on the flight model is bneing done this week (23-27 March 1998).
News from NASA is that the Argos mission on which SUNSAT flies is being delayed until 11 November 1998 at the earliest. In spite of the slip, we plan on completing the flight model before June.
The Electronic Systems Laboratory qualified as a category winner at the Standard Bank Top Technology 100 awards in the category R&D : turnover R1.25-R5 million for work on SUNSAT. (More to follow) 
- Functional integration of SUNSAT has been completed. Some problems may still be found in further testing, but the satellite passes its present functional test suite.
- Performance of two RF (radio frequency) modules needs to be improved. This is not of concern since the mechanical impact of the changes will be negligible, and we believe we know the mechanisims involved.
- Major outstanding risks are potential failures during environmental tests, and RF interference radiating from digital electronics to receiver antennas. These aspects are being tested this and next week.
- SUNSAT is presently undergoing RFI, temperature tests, and vibration tests using facilities at the Houwteq division of Denel PTY Ltd. Initial RFI tests have been completed, and temperature cycling tests start on 27 Nov.
Sunsat provides NASA with an opportunity to fly an advanced GPS receiver to perform experiments in atmospheric, ionospheric, and gravity mapping. The co-location of the GPS receiver and the satellite laser reflector will permit a check to the two reference frame systems for GPS and SLR geodesy efforts. Finally the Hermanus Obervatory magnetometer will provide a complementary measurement of the magnetic field to the Oersted geomagnetic satellite which will also be launched as a secondary mission aboard the Argus P-91 launch in August 1997.
Mr Lionel Mtshali, Minister of Arts , Culture, Science and Technology visited the SUNSAT project on 22 April 1997 during a morning visit to the University.
Visitors to the Engineering Faculty Open Day will see the SUNSAT flight Model on display. Upwards of two thousand students are expected to see SUNSAT and other Engineering projects from 09h00 to 16h30 on the 23rd of April 1997. All are welcome.
Magnetometer goes to HMO for alignment with
star camera
The Sunsat tipmass magnetometer (Skymag)and star camera (Skycam)
will have alignment axes measured and calibrated at the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory in
the second week of April.
Minister Jay Naidoo announces Sunsat.
Minister Jay Naidoo (Post and Telecommunications) announces
Sunsat in hisopening speech at the Telkom '97 Conference, attended by all major
telecommunications players.
The South African Cabinet authorised the launch of Sunsat in a meeting on the 19th of March.
by Buchan Milne .
WWW:sunsat.ee.sun.ac.za