Hands-on Manufacturing Education:

Radio Reception Experiment from KOSEN CubeSat Using Cardboard Yagi Antenna

Abstract

Recently, utilizing a small satellite, such as CubeSat, for space education has gained global attention. The KOSEN-1 CubeSat, developed by National Institute of Technology (abbreviated as KOSEN in Japanese), has been transmitting continuous waves while in orbit around Earth since 2021. Building a cheap and reliable antenna to receive these waves from the amateur satellites like KOSEN-1 is a significant matter. In 2023, we conducted hands-on manufacturing workshops four times to build cardboard Yagi antennas for KOSEN students and the general public. Each workshop included the steps of building the antenna by hand and using it to receive radio waves from KOSEN-1. In this paper, we report a summary of these workshops and evaluate the results of the questionnaires filled out by the participants.