Upcoming Amateur Radio CubeSats: The Flood Has Arrived

摘要

If the four launches happen with minimal delays, the upcoming months promise to be very excitingfor the UHF amateur radio spectrum. Many new CubeSats and PocketQubs will be on orbit, andevery launch will create a scramble to match satellites with object numbers.Progress is also being made on licensing support for CubeSat developers. Launch integrators arenow required by their funding agencies and mission managers to provide technical and logisticalsupport for frequency selection and license acquisition, including the actual ling of the experi-mental licenses. This process ensures uniformity, completeness, and coordination of applications,thereby reducing some of the strain on the FCC and IARU. While this frequency licensing supportis currently provided for US ELaNa launches only, it is recommended that international launchintegrators provide these services.To encourage CubeSats to move away from amateur radio frequencies, a recent meeting at theSmallSat Conference in Logan, Utah, was convened by the author to discuss emerging hardwareradio solutions. Meeting participants discussed many high-speed data radio projects that use non-amateur frequencies in S-band, C-band, X-band, and Ka-band [21, 22, 23, 24].