During the month of October the IARU coordinated frequencies for six
upcoming Amateur Radio satellites:
- OreSat0 (Portland State Aerospace Society at Portland State
University is a 1U CubeSat. The mission is to provide flight heritage
to the “OreSat bus”, an open source card-cage based system that is
ideally suited for education CubeSat projects involving
interdisciplinary teams of students. Downlinks on UHF using CW
beacon, 9k6 G3RUH AX25/APRS packet beacon and a 96k GMSK
engineering downlink. Also downlink on S Band using amateur 802.11b
DPSK with 11M chip/sec spread and 1 Mbps data rate for bulk mission
data. Downlinks on 436.500 MHz and 2425.00 MHz have been
coordinated. Planning a launch with Momentus Space from Cape
Canaveral in February 2021 into a 450 km polar orbit. More info at:
http://oresat.org/ and https://github.com/oresat. - TartanArtibeus-1 (Carnegie Mellon University) is a 1P PocketQube.
The
Amateur Radio community globally will be provided with a delay
ping-back service, allowing Amateurs to send messages, with replies
from the satellite transmitted later. A UHF downlink using 3kbps FSK
compatible with RadioHead library. A downlink on 437.170 MHz has
been coordinated. Planning a SpaceX launch from KSC in December 2020
into a 550km SSO. - SATLLA-2 (Ariel University) is a 2P picosat that will take
low-resolution photos and will broadcast the photos over the Amateur
Radio with its position in orbit and data from its sensors. UHF and S
Band downlinks using LORA from 476bps to 9k6 bps. Downlinks on
437.250 MHz and 2401.000 MHz have been coordinated.Planning a SpaceX
launch into a 410 km 52 degree orbit in December 2020. - CSIROSat-1 (University of South Australia & CSIRO) is a 3U CubeSat
mission that will perform hyperspectral infrared imaging of the earth
for scientific research purposes. An experimental two-way link for
Amateur Radio operators to exchange short messages through a
‘ping-pong’ arrangement of data exchange is among the several
communications experiments. Proposing a 9k6 FSK downlink. A downlink
on 437.315 MHz has been coordinated. Planning a launch from Cape
Canaveral in March 2021 into an ISS orbit. - PyCubed-1 (Carnegie Mellon University) is a 1P PocketQube that will
test a novel 3-axis attitude control system based on magnetic torque
coils. In addition, it will test new low- power LoRa radios in
low-Earth orbit which will be of interest to many other Amateur Radio
small satellite operators. Proposing a 3kbps UHF downlink. A downlink
on 437.290 MHz has been coordinated. Packets are standard LoRa format
and are compatible with the RadioHead library. Planning a SpaceX
launch from KSC into a 550 km SSO in December 2020. - Grizu-263A (Zonguldak Bülent Ecevit University) is a pocketcube
satellite with a digipeater mode that will allow forwarding of
received messages back to earth to support communication between
Amateur Radio operators. Proposing a UHF downlink using 4k8 FSK. A
downlink on 437.190 MHz has been coordinated. Planning a SpaceX
launch from Vandenberg into a 500 600 km SSO in December 2020.
Information on these and other upcoming satellites can be found at:
http://www.amsat.org.uk/iaru/.
[ANS thanks the IARU for the above information.]