The "K2 Tuesdays" posts (as well as this Thursday edition) are a semi-regular series on the development of KySat-2, the latest spacecraft from Kentucky Space. Prior installments are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

While at the CubeSat conference at CalPoly last week, the KySat-2 team did a test fit of the craft, which included the machined frame, printed solar panels and antenna holders, with the standard deployer used to eject Cubesats on orbit. See the image on the right. The test fit, thankfully, was 100 percent uneventful.

Here's a short look ahead at what the University of Kentucky and Morehead State University teams will tackle in the next couple of months.

• Testing the interface between the command & data handling and power systems in early May.
• The team at Morehead will do antenna characterization and antenna deployment testing with the milled flight chassis, which will be anodized soon. The remainder of the month will be dedicated to radio testing, and to debugging the flat-sat configuration of the satellite at the Kentucky Space lab in Lexington.
• In June, the team will check out the ground station operation, and conduct environmental testing, including thermal vacuum test and bakeout of the spacecraft.

One of the must-attend events for any developer, the 2013 CubeSat Workshop has just wrapped up. Videos of the sessions, which featured presentations from Kentucky on Wednesday and Friday, may be found here, the agenda for the entire event, here.

The Wednesday session featured a discussion of the command and data handling board for KySat-2. The craft is currently under construction and the subject of numerous "K-2 Tuesday" entries by Kentucky Space Space Systems Engineer, Twyman Clements.

On Friday, University of Kentucky students offered a description of an experimental bus they have under development.

The milled flight model chassis for K-2 is pictured to the right.

Wayne