Project Roadmap
Five phases from terrestrial validation to cislunar deep-space communication.
Phase Status
Complete Validated and operational
In Progress Currently active
Planned Future development
Phase 1: Terrestrial DTN Validation
Complete- Hardware
- Raspberry Pi + Mobilinkd TNC4 + Yaesu FT-817
- Link Characteristics
- VHF/UHF at 9600 baud (G3RUH GFSK)
- Purpose
- Ground-based validation using commercial amateur radio equipment. Two-node terrestrial network operational. Validated ping, store-and-forward, and telemetry.
Phase 1.5: QO-100 GEO Satellite DTN
Planned- Hardware
- Ground station with 2.4 GHz uplink + 10 GHz downlink
- Link Characteristics
- QO-100 narrowband transponder (Es'hail-2 satellite)
- Purpose
- Geostationary satellite demonstration using QO-100 amateur transponder. Validate DTN over real satellite link with constant visibility. First space-based DTN demonstration before LEO orbital complexity.
Phase 2: CubeSat Engineering Model (EM)
Planned- Hardware
- STM32U585 OBC + Ettus B200mini SDR + External NVM
- Link Characteristics
- UHF 437 MHz / S-band 2.2 GHz
- Purpose
- Ground-based flatsat with flight-representative hardware. Validate flight software, power budget, thermal/vacuum readiness. Identical software stack to flight unit, lab-grade RF front-end.
Phase 3: LEO CubeSat Flight
Planned- Hardware
- STM32U585 OBC + Flight IQ transceiver
- Link Characteristics
- UHF 437 MHz at 9.6 kbps
- Purpose
- Orbital deployment demonstrating ground-to-space DTN. Ground-to-space ping and store-and-forward. Handheld/small Yagi reception for broad community participation.
Phase 4: Cislunar Deep-Space Communication
Planned- Hardware
- STM32U585 or more capable processor
- Link Characteristics
- S-band/X-band with LDPC/Turbo coding
- Purpose
- Amateur participation in Earth-Moon DTN. Earth-Moon distance (~384,400 km). 3-5m dishes for 500 bps cislunar links.