It is astounding how the past six weeks have flown past. My work during the final week consisted mainly of observing the communications board of a different satellite, CU-E3, going through troubleshooting because it wasn’t cooperating with the radio correctly. The process involved a mixer that is fed a low frequency (382 MHz in our case) in order to find a higher frequency. The two frequencies, through diodes, are evaluated for both the sum and difference of the two. We want the sum in order for the comm board to work correctly. The problem was found in the comm board itself, mainly some minor wire and soldering done by the expert, Kyle, who actually designed the comm board himself.
This is the comm board itself, outputting the frequencies for us to observe whether or not it is working.
This, as its name suggest, is the USB interface that connects the comm board to the computer. Nothing too fancy.
This 50 thousand dollar piece of technology reads the frequencies in GHz vs. decibels.
Eventually, we had found success in the frequency output. We didn’t want the frequency to be weak, but we didn’t want it to be too strong either. This output would be 518 MHz.
This was the data that ensured that the communication board was working correctly and is essentially ready to put onto the satellite.
The satellite itself has its own goal, which is to demonstrate how to make a low cost satellite that will even go way past the moon, yet get signals to and from Earth and transmit/receive with no errors. With the completion of the communication board, CU-E3 is a step closer to this goal.
On the side, I mainly went out more to town (as in Pearl Street) and explored the different stores and people. I ended up being lured by a street performer who did a juggling act with swords and fire, which was pretty cool.
The street performer holding flames a bit close.
I also had the pleasure of joining a random group of people in a game of hacky-sack, just like I do at school. I was eventually driven to go to a close toy shop and by my own.
Eventually, all good things come to an end, including this internship. I want to express my gratitude to the generosity of the Coulter-Clark family and their amazing hospitality and my biggest thanks to Andrew Dahir and the team at CU Boulder for giving me this opportunity to experience the real deal and for giving me this learning opportunity before I actually go out into the world on my own.
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