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==================================================
FULL AMSAT OFFICIAL BULLETIN - ENGLISH
==================================================
Title : ANS-305 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins
--------------------------------------------------
AMSAT News Service
ANS-305November 1, 2026
In this edition:
AMSAT OSCAR Satellite Status Page – New URL
Spacewalkers Install Seventh Roll-Out Solar Array; Final
Installation Set for November 5
ARISS SSTV Series 34 Concludes
UNNE-1B Heard Around the World as AMSAT-EA Commissions Its Newest
PocketQubes
IARU Coordinates HADES-L and PVDX; Three Requests Declined, Four
New Applications Filed
Polish Student CubeSat PUCHACZ Seeks IARU Frequency Coordination
UMKA-1 Sends Telescope Images by SSTV
ARISS Opens New U.S. School Contact Proposal Window
FO-29 Full-Sunlight Season Enters Its Final Weeks
FO-126 Conducting 5.84 GHz High-Speed Tests
NASA Details Accelerated Artemis Plan: Earth-Orbit Lander Test in
2027, Lunar Landings in 2028
HOA Lobbying Group Makes Blocking Amateur Radio Antenna Bill a
Top Priority
Changes to AMSAT TLE Distribution for October 30, 2026
ARISS News
AMSAT Ambassador Activities
Satellite Shorts From All Over
The AMSAT® News Service bulletins are a free, weekly news and
information service of AMSAT, The Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation.
ANS publishes news related to Amateur Radio in Space including
reports on the activities of a worldwide group of Amateur Radio
operators who share an active interest in designing, building,
launching and communicating through analog and digital Amateur
Radio satellites.
The news feed on https://www.amsat.org publishes news of Amateur
Radio in Space as soon as our volunteers can post it.
Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to: ans-editor
[at] amsat.org
You can sign up for free e-mail delivery of the AMSAT News
Service Bulletins via the ANS List; to join this list see:
https://mailman.amsat.org/postorius/lists/ans.amsat.org/
AMSAT OSCAR Satellite Status Page – New URL
The AMSAT IT Team and community volunteers have been working for
a number of months to upgrade the AMSAT Status Page. This effort
brings new features, a more modern technical implementation, and
enables open-source development. One of the biggest changes is
coming up on Wednesday, November 4th. The URL will switch to
https://status.amsat.org. The API will be reachable at
https://status.amsat.org/api/v1 [Overview].
Notification banners have been placed on both sites. The site
migration will commence at 1400 UTC on November 4th. The IT Team
expects up to two hours before all historical and current data is
migrated to the new site. Once the migration is completed, the
old site will automatically redirect users to the new one.
The AMSAT community, and others, are welcome and encouraged to
engage in the ongoing development activity.
Problems/Issues/Questions/Requests/Suggestions should be
submitted (as an issue) to the Github project repo here. You can
also reach out in the AMSAT Discord server in the #open-source-
dev channel. You may also contact the IT team via e-mail at IT at
amsat.org.[ANS thanks Matthew Alberti, KM4EXS, AMSAT IT Team
Lead, for the above information]
LIMITED TIME OFFER!!!
AMSAT is offering a limited-time promotion for new and renewing
members that includes a free digital copy of Getting Started with
Amateur Satellites. The promotion is being offered as AMSAT
begins the 2026 membership year.
Anyone who joins or renews their AMSAT membership during the
promotional period will receive a download link for the latest
edition of Getting Started with Amateur Satellites in their
membership confirmation email. JOIN TODAY at
https://launch.amsat.org/ (Remember! Students join for FREE!)
Spacewalkers Install Seventh Roll-Out Solar Array; Final
Installation Set for November 5
NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Canadian Space Agency astronaut
Joshua Kutryk, KJ5BFU, completed a 7-hour, 11-minute spacewalk on
Thursday, October 29, installing and deploying the seventh of
eight International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays (iROSAs)
on the station's port truss. NASA reported the following day that
the new array is generating power. The pair are scheduled to go
back outside on Thursday, November 5, to install the eighth and
final array, completing a power upgrade campaign that began in
June 2021.
The spacewalk officially began at 7:57 a.m. EDT (1157 UTC) when
the two astronauts switched their suits to battery power inside
the Quest airlock. Menon exited first, followed six minutes later
by Kutryk, who with that step became the fifth Canadian to walk
in space. After reaching the iROSA carrier pallet on the truss,
Menon climbed into a foot restraint on the end of the Canadarm2
robotic arm while Kutryk released the bolts holding the folded
array in place. Menon, riding the arm, carried the 750-pound
(340-kilogram) package to the P4 truss, where the two soft-docked
it onto the mounting bracket in front of the station's original
2A power-channel array at 10:40 a.m. EDT. Three of the four main
power connectors were mated before the crew paused for an orbital
day pass, since the connections must be made in darkness when the
arrays are not generating power. Roll-out began at 12:21 p.m. EDT
(1621 UTC), four hours and 23 minutes into the spacewalk, and
about 12 minutes later the 63-foot (19-meter) array was fully
extended, draping over roughly half of the legacy wing behind it.
No motor was involved; the stored energy in the array's rolled
carbon-composite booms did the work, after which Menon drove two
tension bolts to pull the blanket taut and mated the final
connector during the next night pass.
Running about an hour ahead of the timeline, the spacewalkers
then turned to get-ahead tasks for the second excursion, cleaning
up the P4 worksite, removing the beams and booms that had secured
the seventh array for launch, and releasing the anti-rotation
devices and launch locks on the eighth array, which remains
stowed on its carrier. The spacewalk ended at 3:08 p.m. EDT (1908
UTC) with airlock repressurization. NASA commentator Rob Navias
described the outing as "essentially flawless." Inside the
station, NASA astronauts Luke Delaney, KJ5PPF, and Jessica
Watkins operated Canadarm2, while NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers
guided the spacewalkers from Mission Control Houston and CSA
astronaut Jenni Gibbons served as capcom.
The excursion was the 285th spacewalk conducted in support of
station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades, and NASA's count
also made it U.S. Spacewalk 100, the 100th conducted from the
Quest airlock without a Space Shuttle docked to the station. The
first, by Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch on February 20, 2002, had
largely been a checkout of the then-new airlock. "This is USOS
EVA 100, which is an incredible milestone," Menon noted from
outside. It was the fourth spacewalk for Menon, who arrived
aboard a Soyuz in July and has now logged 26 hours and 31 minutes
outside the station, and the first for Kutryk, who follows Chris
Hadfield (2001), Steve MacLean (2006), Dave Williams (2007), and
David Saint-Jacques (2019) on the short list of Canadian
spacewalkers. Menon offered two observations for the ages,
remarking "The night is dark and full of wonder" as he opened the
airlock's thermal cover at the start of the spacewalk, and "I can
say it is always sunny in space" as it ended.
The two arrays for this round of spacewalks arrived at the
station in the trunk of the SpaceX CRS-35 Dragon cargo
spacecraft, which launched from Cape Canaveral on October 13. The
iROSAs are mounted in front of the station's eight original solar
wings, which have exceeded their 15-year design life and degraded
as expected, and each new array produces more than 20 kilowatts
even while shadowing part of the older wing behind it. With all
eight installed, NASA says the station's generating capacity will
rise from about 160 kilowatts to about 215 kilowatts, an increase
of up to 30 percent that will support research and operations
through the station's planned 2030 retirement, including the
power needed for its safe and controlled deorbit.
The second outing, U.S. Spacewalk 101 on November 5, will take
Menon and Kutryk to the far starboard end of the truss to install
the final array on the 3B power channel of the S6 truss segment.
That worksite lies beyond the reach of Canadarm2, so the
astronauts will have to "leapfrog" the array out to the end of
the truss by hand, a more demanding task than Thursday's
robotics-assisted installation. NASA's live coverage is scheduled
to begin at 6:45 a.m. EST (1145 UTC) on NASA+ and the agency's
website.
The spacewalks matter to the amateur radio community for a
practical reason. As a standing safety protocol, the ARISS radios
aboard the station are powered off whenever a spacewalk, docking,
or undocking is underway, so the Columbus Module crossband
repeater and the Zvezda Service Module APRS digipeater were
silent on Thursday and will be again on November 5. ARISS school
contacts are also scheduled around spacewalk days; the ARISS
operations calendar currently shows no contacts between the
October 30 telebridge contact with The Smile of the Child in
Greece (see ARISS News below) and the November 5 spacewalk.
[ANS thanks NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, Spaceflight Now, and
Space.com for the above information.]
ARISS SSTV Series 34 Concludes
The second ISS Slow Scan Television event of October has come to
a close. ARISS SSTV Series 34, featuring images of ARISS
hardware, began on Thursday, October 22, and concluded on Monday,
October 26, at 17:45 UTC, giving stations around the world four
days of passes to capture the Expedition 75 transmissions.
As with the Series 33 "Student Education" event earlier in the
month, images were transmitted from the amateur radio station in
the ISS Service Module under the callsign RS0ISS on 437.550 MHz
FM using the Robot 36 mode, with each image taking 36 seconds to
send followed by a gap of about two minutes. The 70-centimeter
downlink meant a Doppler swing of roughly plus or minus 10 kHz
across each pass, so stations that stepped their receivers
through the pass, or that let their software do it for them, had
the best chance of a clean decode. With only a 36-second
transmission in each cycle, the event rewarded patience: a
station that heard nothing simply waited two minutes for the next
frame.
With the SSTV event complete, ARISS-Europe says the Service
Module transceiver is being returned to APRS packet operation on
437.825 MHz, where it is expected to remain through the end of
the year, except during spacewalks and other periods when the
station's amateur radios are switched off (see the lead story and
ARISS News, below). Updates on future SSTV events are posted at
https://www.ariss.org/upcoming-sstv-events.html and on the ARISS
social media channels.
[ANS thanks ARISS, ARISS-Europe, and AMSAT-UK for the above
information.]
UNNE-1B Heard Around the World as AMSAT-EA Commissions Its Newest
PocketQubes
Four weeks after launch, AMSAT-EA's UNNE-1B PocketQube is in
orbit, transmitting, and being decoded by ground stations around
the world, while the organization works through the commissioning
steps that will precede activation of its FM voice and data
repeater. The status of its sister spacecraft, HADES-L, which
shared the ride, has not yet been publicly reported.
Both satellites launched on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare
mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 18:32 UTC on October
1, carried inside OSSIE-D, an orbital transfer vehicle built by
the Spanish company UARX. OSSIE-D separated from the Falcon 9
upper stage roughly an hour after liftoff at an altitude of about
520 km. AMSAT-EA reported that UNNE-1B and HADES-L were then
ejected from the transfer vehicle on Friday, October 2, at 11:48
UTC, considerably earlier than the days or weeks of orbit
stabilization the team had cautioned might be required. The first
UNNE-1B packets were received on October 4, and in an October 13
update the team at Universidad Nebrija in Madrid, whose students
developed the satellite's educational payload, said the amateur
community had been receiving telemetry steadily since then,
including the first packets from the on-board game.
UNNE-1B, also known as HADES-E2, is a 1.5P PocketQube that uses
the same hardware and software as the original UNNE-1, whose
planned launch aboard RFA One from the United Kingdom has been
repeatedly delayed. Its SDR-based FM/FSK repeater listens on
145.925 MHz, accepting FM voice without any access tone along
with FSK at 200 bps and AFSK AX.25 and APRS at 1200 or 2400 bps,
and downlinks on 436.888 MHz. The repeater launched in mode 0, in
which only telemetry is transmitted, and will be switched on by
telecommand once in-orbit testing is complete; mode 1 provides
the FM repeater for voice and data, and mode 2 a regenerative
digital repeater. Once enabled, the UNNE-1B repeater is intended
to remain continuously available, activated by carrier squelch.
The satellite also transmits a CW beacon and a prerecorded CODEC2
digital voice message.
The educational payload is a deduction game, "Space Cowboy II,"
written by Nebrija's ARIES student group and running on an
Arduino board. The satellite sends a telemetry packet, type 10,
containing the game status and the number of weeks since release,
and will transmit one clue per week; amateurs who collect the
clues can attempt to solve the mystery of a lost spacecraft and
an encrypted message. The telemetry uses FSK with about 1.64 kHz
tone spacing and a 0xBF35 sync word, and decoder details are
being published at https://www.nebrija.com/unne1b/en/index.html
and on the AMSAT-EA website at https://www.amsat-ea.org/.
HADES-L is the more experimental of the pair. Measuring just 10 x
5 x 5 cm and generating an average of only 175 mW, it carries a
transponder with an uplink on the 10-meter band, 29.472 MHz USB
with about 3 kHz of bandwidth and no access tone, and an FM
downlink on 436.665 MHz. The IARU completed coordination of a
436.665 MHz downlink and uplinks on both 29.472 MHz and 145.875
MHz on October 2 (see the coordination roundup below). Because of
the tight power budget, the transponder is designed to operate
for only four minutes out of every twelve, and the UHF
transmitter switches between +13 dBm and +20 dBm depending on
battery charge. AMSAT-EA recommends about 25 watts on the uplink
and cautions operators not to overdrive the receiver's AGC. The
transponder can carry a single FM voice channel or several
simultaneous CW, FT4, or FT8 signals, and the first Wednesday of
each month is reserved for digital-mode experiments. Telemetry
and experiment data, including measurements of the 30 MHz noise
floor at orbital altitude, a radiation experiment comparing
materials used in the spacecraft, and an evaluation of an
electrically short receiving antenna, are transmitted at 800 bps.
Reception reports for both satellites are welcomed via the
SatNOGS network and the AMSAT-EA website. The two spacecraft join
AMSAT-EA's HADES-SA (SO-127), launched in March, and bring the
organization's active fleet to a size that would have been hard
to imagine when its first PocketQube, HADES-D (SO-121), was
deployed in late 2023.
[ANS thanks AMSAT-EA, Universidad Nebrija, Felix Paez, EA4GQS,
and Mineo Wakita, JE9PEL, for the above information]
IARU Coordinates HADES-L and PVDX; Three Requests Declined, Four
New Applications Filed
October brought a steady flow of activity to the IARU Satellite
Frequency Coordination Panel's status pages, hosted by AMSAT-UK
at https://iaru.amsat-uk.org/index.php. Since ANS last reviewed
the pages at the end of September, the panel has completed two
coordinations, declined three requests, and posted four new
applications from universities and student groups in Nepal,
Louisiana, Utah, and Poland.
Coordination Completed
+ HADES-L – AMSAT-EA (coordinated October 2). The panel
coordinated a downlink on 436.665 MHz and uplinks on 145.875 MHz
and 29.472 MHz for the 10 x 5 x 5 cm experimental satellite
described in the story above. The application, filed in July,
proposed the 29 MHz uplink specifically to introduce a new
challenge for the amateur community, as the 10-meter band is
rarely used for amateur satellite uplinks. Coordination was
completed the day after the satellite launched on Transporter-18.
+ PVDX – Brown Space Engineering, Brown University
(coordinated October 12). The Perovskite Visuals and Degradation
Experiment is a 3U CubeSat with three objectives: flight-testing
an open-source, low-cost UHF amateur satellite radio board built
around the AT86RF215 transceiver and inspired by the OpenLST
design, which the students hope will cut the cost-performance
ratio of amateur satellite radios; an outreach program in which
primary and secondary students create pixel art using p5.js and
receive back a photograph of their art displayed on the side of
the satellite against the Earth; and monitoring the degradation
of novel perovskite solar cells developed in Brown's Padture lab.
Up- and downlinks were coordinated on 437.765 MHz, using 9600 bps
QPSK with convolutional coding, and on 2418.500 MHz, where a 50
kbps DVB-S2 downlink is planned. Launch is planned through
Voyager Space from Cape Canaveral in 2027 into a 410 km,
51.6-degree orbit, suggesting deployment from the ISS.
Coordination Declined
The panel declined three requests on October 12, two of them with
its reasoning noted on the entry:
+ UTNH-Sat – Universidad Tecnologica Nacional Regional
Haedo, Argentina. Reported as a new application in ANS-270, the
satellite proposed LoRa telemetry and a 20 wpm CW beacon on
436.850 MHz along with an automatic LoRa ping-response service
that would reply to amateurs with their own callsigns, and a
radiation-counter payload for educational use. The entry states
only that the request has been declined; the application had
indicated a planned SpaceX launch from Vandenberg in October.
+ GlobalGirlzSAT – Space Kidz India. A 12U CubeSat
described as a space-education and international-collaboration
mission carrying an Earth-observation camera, space-domain-
awareness cameras, thermal and magnetic experiments, AI
computing, materials research, and a drag-sail deorbit
demonstration, with VHF, UHF, and S-band downlinks proposed using
9k6 GMSK and FSK for a November 2026 launch from Sriharikota. The
panel declined the request "without a clear amateur mission that
is fully separated from commercial, scientific and other non-
amateur payloads."
+ VinSat constellation – VinSpace JSC, Vietnam. Four 3U
CubeSats intended for a 500 km, 47-degree orbit in the second
quarter of 2027, with goals of capacity building for students and
young engineers, space-environment study, and evaluation of an
in-house payload, proposing a UHF BPSK downlink at 1k2 to 9k6
bps. Although telemetry and image data were to be unencrypted,
payload data was to be encrypted, and the panel declined
coordination "in the absence of a specific amateur radio
mission."
New Applications
+ Slippers2Sat-2 – Antarikchya Pratisthan Nepal (posted
September 28). A 1U CubeSat with a disaster-assessment mission
built around an array of four magnetometers intended to detect
fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field as possible earthquake
precursors, plus near-infrared and RGB cameras for water-index
imagery. The amateur payload is an AX.25 digipeater, and the team
plans to downlink its magnetometer data and AI-filtered "good"
images for about 24 hours at a time over the amateur downlink so
that operators worldwide can receive, reconstruct, and upload
them. The team has committed to publish its GMSK telemetry
framing, decoding software, and documentation before launch, and
proposes 4k8 GMSK and 20 wpm CW on UHF. Launch is planned via
Exolaunch on a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg in mid-to-late 2027. More
at https://s2s2.antarikchya.org.np/.
+ CAPE-Twiggs CubeSat – University of Louisiana at
Lafayette (posted October 11). The responsible operator is Garth
Likens, KJ5GYK. The 3U bus accommodates a modular array of
"SlimSat" payload cards, and all of the schools involved will
have students obtain amateur licenses as they design the
hardware. The team proposes UHF and S-band downlinks using chirp
spread spectrum (LoRa) with spreading factors adjustable between
SF5 and SF12, and promises an open-source protocol with easy-to-
use decoding software. No launch details have been provided. More
at https://ee.louisiana.edu/research/cape.
+ RadiCAL Sat – Brigham Young University (posted October
12). The responsible operator is David Long, KA6WFX. The 1U
CubeSat's mission is a digital bulletin board system accessible
to amateurs worldwide, allowing operators to read and post
messages via 9600 baud FSK on UHF, while giving BYU students, who
will become licensed as part of the project, experience in
building spacecraft and operating amateur satellite links. Launch
is planned through Exolaunch on a SpaceX mission from Vandenberg
in the second quarter of 2027 into a 520 km polar orbit. More at
https://spacecraft.byu.edu/.
+ Puchacz – AGH University of Krakow, Faculty of Space
Technologies, Poland (posted October 19). The responsible
operator is Jakub Kopec, SP9QBR. The 2U CubeSat from the AGH
SatLab student group is presented as an amateur-educational
mission under Section 5.4 of the ITU Handbook on Small
Satellites, with its command link itself the subject of an
experiment to minimize the number of telecommands needed for
nominal operations. The amateur payload includes an in-house
radio built around the Semtech SX1262 with a fully duplicated RF
chain for radiation resilience, LoRa and GFSK transmissions at
19.2 and 38.4 kbps (some using IL2P framing), SSDV image
downlinks from an RGB camera, and a "Message of the Day" service
that replies to an operator's ping with their callsign, a
counter, and a daily quote. A multispectral camera and an
experimental laser communication terminal will use a separate
S-band downlink outside the amateur bands. The team proposes a
UHF downlink using 125 kHz LoRa and GFSK, with launch planned on
a SpaceX mission from Vandenberg no earlier than April 1, 2027,
into a 525 km polar orbit. More at
https://wiki.satlab.agh.edu.pl/.
[ANS thanks the IARU Satellite Frequency Coordination Panel and
AMSAT-UK for the above information.]
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Polish Student CubeSat PUCHACZ Seeks IARU Frequency Coordination
A Polish student satellite with an unusually extensive amateur
radio payload has entered the IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency
Coordination process.
PUCHACZ is a 2U CubeSat under development by SatLab AGH, a
student research group at the AGH University of Krakow's Faculty
of Space Technologies. The IARU coordination status page listed
PUCHACZ as its most recently updated application as of October
29. Frequency coordination remains in process.
The amateur radio system is more than a basic telemetry
transmitter. Students plan to experiment with a custom command-
and-control architecture based on the CubeSat Space Protocol, or
CSP. Authenticated telecommands will be transmitted through the
spacecraft's 70-centimeter amateur radio command link, and the
project intends to study ways of reducing the amount of uplink
time required for routine spacecraft operations. Results are
expected to be published for use by other amateur and student
satellite projects.
PUCHACZ's student-developed radio is based around a Semtech
SX1262 transceiver with duplicated RF chains for increased
resilience. Proposed amateur downlink modes include LoRa with 125
kHz bandwidth and GFSK at 19.2 and 38.4 kbps. Some GFSK
transmissions will use IL2P framing.
One of the more interesting planned amateur experiments is image
transmission. Pictures from the spacecraft's RGB camera are
expected to be encoded as SSDV and sent in either LoRa or
GFSK/IL2P frames. The team says schedules and reception guides
for both SX1262 receivers and software-defined radios will be
published for amateur operators.
PUCHACZ will also offer a two-way "Message of the Day" experiment
for licensed radio amateurs. An operator will be able to send a
short packet containing a call sign and Maidenhead locator. The
spacecraft will answer with a message containing the operator's
call sign, a count of answered requests, and a daily quotation.
Other experiments include the BEAR radiation payload, containing
12 dosimeters to compare the radiation-shielding properties of
several biomaterials, and a custom pulse-power system associated
with the DZIDA optical communications payload.
Outside the amateur-satellite service, PUCHACZ carries RGB and
multispectral Earth-imaging cameras and DZIDA, an experimental
infrared optical communications terminal. SatLab describes DZIDA
as a wide-beam pulsed laser downlink intended to demonstrate an
energy-efficient optical communications system suitable for small
spacecraft. Full-resolution imagery and other non-amateur payload
data are planned for a separate S-band link.
The current coordination filing anticipates a SpaceX launch from
Vandenberg Space Force Base no earlier than April 1, 2027,
targeting an approximately 525 km polar orbit. The university
more generally lists the mission's launch window as 2027.
As with all spacecraft in the IARU coordination process, proposed
amateur frequencies and operating plans should not be treated as
final until coordination is completed.
[ANS thanks the IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination
panel, AMSAT-UK, and SatLab AGH at the AGH University of Krakow
for the above information.]
UMKA-1 Sends Telescope Images by SSTV
Radio amateurs had another opportunity to receive pictures
directly from orbit this week as the Russian UMKA-1 CubeSat
conducted an SSTV transmission campaign from October 27 through
October 29.
The spacecraft transmitted on 437.625 MHz using the Robot 36 SSTV
format. Images were scheduled at approximately 200-second
intervals, although organizers cautioned that transmissions could
be interrupted depending on the state of the spacecraft's
battery.
Two different images were included in the transmission sequence.
Both were derived from photographs obtained by UMKA-1's onboard
telescope. The activity was organized in connection with
educational activities for students.
The use of SSTV by educational satellites gives students and
radio amateurs a particularly accessible way to receive
spacecraft data: a suitable UHF receiving station, audio
connection, and readily available SSTV decoding software are
enough to turn a signal from orbit into a recognizable image.
UMKA-1's activity came immediately after the International Space
Station completed its own multi-day Series 34 SSTV transmission
event, making late October an unusually active period for amateur
satellite image reception.
[ANS thanks AMSAT Francophone for the above information]
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ARISS Opens New U.S. School Contact Proposal Window
U.S. schools and educational organizations can now submit
proposals for Amateur Radio on the International Space Station
contacts planned for the second half of 2027.
The current U.S. proposal window runs from October through
December 2026, with applications due December 31, 2026.
Successful proposals from this window are expected to be
scheduled for contacts taking place between July and December
2027. A second application window covering the same contact
period will run from January through March 2027.
Scheduled ARISS contacts allow students to speak directly with an
astronaut aboard the International Space Station during an
approximately ten-minute radio window. Organizations may propose
either a direct contact, in which amateur radio equipment is
established at the school, or a telebridge contact using one of
ARISS's dedicated ground stations.
ARISS emphasizes that the radio contact should form part of a
broader educational program rather than simply being a one-time
event. U.S. proposals are expected to include plans for students
to study subjects related to space technology, exploration,
communications, wireless technology, or radio science.
Schools selected for a contact are assigned an ARISS Technical
Mentor. ARRL and AMSAT can also assist participating
organizations in locating a local amateur radio club to provide
equipment, expertise, and educational support.
Application schedules differ outside the United States. Schools
and youth organizations in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East
use application periods organized by ARISS Europe, while other
regions apply through their appropriate ARISS regional
representatives.
[ANS thanks Amateur Radio on the International Space Station for
the above information.]
FO-29 Full-Sunlight Season Enters Its Final Weeks
Operators interested in working one of amateur radio's longest-
lived linear satellites may have only a few more weeks before
Fuji-OSCAR 29 (FO-29) returns to periods of eclipse.
FO-29's batteries have deteriorated over the past 30 years,
leaving the satellite dependent on solar power to stay active for
more than a few minutes. When its orbit remains continuously
illuminated by the Sun, the V/U linear transponder can operate
without the scheduled command activations required during
portions of the year when the satellite enters Earth's shadow.
A long period of continuous solar illumination began around May
20 and was projected to continue until approximately mid-November
2026. AMSAT's current linear-satellite listing still reports
FO-29 as being in full sunlight.
FO-29 carries an inverting V/U analog transponder:
* Uplink: 145.900-146.000 MHz, LSB* Downlink: 435.800-435.900
MHz, USB* CW beacon: 435.795 MHz
The satellite was launched in 1996 and remains under the control
of the Japan Amateur Radio League. Its continued operation three
decades later makes it one of the veteran spacecraft of the
amateur satellite fleet.
As eclipses begin returning to its orbit, operators should not
assume that the transponder will remain available continuously.
During eclipse seasons the JARL control team may activate the
satellite according to announced schedules when sufficient power
is available.
[ANS thanks the Japan Amateur Radio League for the above
information.]
FO-126 Conducting 5.84 GHz High-Speed Tests
OrigamiSat-2 (Fuji-OSCAR 126 / FO-126), developed by the
Institute of Science Tokyo, is conducting additional high-speed
data transmissions on 5.84 GHz. The team has scheduled 500 kbit/s
downlinks lasting approximately 10 minutes during selected passes
through November 8, 2026. These tests support the satelliteâ€Ös
deployable membrane antenna technology demonstration and
promotion of amateur use of the 5.8 GHz band.
FO-126 was launched April 23, 2026, on a Rocket Lab Electron and
also carries a UHF downlink on 437.505 MHz (CW and 1200 bps
AFSK). Operators interested in the C-band experiments are
encouraged to monitor published pass times and share reception
reports with the team.
[ANS thanks AMSAT-HB and the OrigamiSat-2 team for the above
information.]
NASA Details Accelerated Artemis Plan: Earth-Orbit Lander Test in
2027, Lunar Landings in 2028
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Associate Administrator Amit
Kshatriya, and Artemis Program Manager Jeremy Parsons laid out
the agency's plan for returning astronauts to the lunar surface
during an October 23 news conference at Kennedy Space Center,
confirming that Artemis III will fly a crewed Earth-orbit test of
both commercial lunar landers in mid-2027 and that Artemis IV and
Artemis V are both targeting crewed landings at the Moon's south
pole in 2028.
Under the revised architecture, Artemis III will no longer
attempt a landing. Instead, Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 2 lander
will launch first, since it can loiter in Earth orbit for up to
30 days. A four-person crew will follow aboard Orion on the Space
Launch System, docking with Blue Moon on the third day of the
mission and spending two days attached while the astronauts enter
the lander and run through its systems. SpaceX's Starship Human
Landing System will launch on day six with a passive docking
adapter; Orion will dock with it for about two hours, though the
crew will not go aboard. The flight is intended to wring out the
rendezvous and docking operations that both landers will need
before anyone commits to a lunar descent.
The two landers will reach the Moon by different routes. For
Starship, a fully fueled vehicle will dock with Orion in Earth
orbit and push the capsule to the Moon, replacing the original
plan to meet in lunar orbit; two crew members will then descend
to the surface and return to Orion. That plan depends on in-space
propellant transfer, which has not yet been demonstrated. SpaceX
expects its first attempt early next year and an uncrewed lunar
landing test in late 2027. Blue Origin has dropped propellant
transfer from its plan and will instead use three smaller Blue
Moon Mark 1 spacecraft as tugs to move its Mark 2 lander to lunar
orbit, where it will meet Orion. NASA said it expects both
landers to carry crews to the surface by the end of 2028 and that
which one lands first is "up in the air." Each provider must
complete an uncrewed landing before a crewed attempt.
Spacesuits remain a schedule risk. With Axiom Space's suits
running behind, NASA has changed its requirements to allow a
lighter "sortie" suit that limits the first crews to two
excursions of about two hours each on the surface, a tradeoff the
agency called acceptable for the initial missions. The lunar
south pole remains the target, with water ice in permanently
shadowed regions the principal attraction, though Kshatriya
acknowledged "we will always debate" the landing site, and
Isaacman called the idea of an eventual return to an Apollo
landing site "very cool." A National Academies report released
the same week identified four candidate non-polar sites.
The announcement came one day after the Aerospace Safety Advisory
Panel raised concerns about lander readiness, the plan for only a
single uncrewed landing test per provider, and the first-ever use
of cryogenic propellants on the lunar surface. For the amateur
radio community, the stakes are familiar: the ARISS-led AREx
ground station consortium tracked Orion's signals during Artemis
II earlier this year, and the Artemis III Earth-orbit mission
would put a crewed Orion within easy reach of amateur antennas
for the better part of two weeks.
[ANS thanks NASA and SpacePolicyOnline.com for the above
information.]
HOA Lobbying Group Makes Blocking Amateur Radio Antenna Bill a
Top Priority
The Community Associations Institute (CAI), the national lobbying
organization for homeowners associations, condominium
associations, and the management companies that serve them, has
placed opposition to the Amateur Radio Emergency Preparedness Act
among its top federal legislative priorities, according to
materials from the group's Congressional Advocacy Summit held in
Washington, D.C., in September.
The legislation, H.R. 1094 in the House and S. 459 in the Senate,
would prohibit private land-use restrictions, such as HOA
covenants, from precluding the installation and operation of
amateur radio antennas, bringing them under the same kind of
"reasonable accommodation" standard that the FCC's PRB-1 ruling
has applied to state and local governments since 1985. CAI's
summit agenda, which also included FEMA debris-removal funding,
condominium safety financing, and repeal of the Corporate
Transparency Act, asked members to urge Congress to oppose the
bills, which the group says would "fully prohibit" associations
from "reasonably regulating" antenna placement. CAI's stated
position is that "community associations work best when residents
come together to establish and enforce reasonable rules" and that
it opposes federal legislation restricting an association's
ability to require prior approval of radio infrastructure.
Neither chamber has scheduled a vote on the measure, which enjoys
bipartisan sponsorship. ARRL, which launched a nationwide
grassroots campaign in support of the legislation last year,
continues to ask amateurs to contact their representatives and
senators, and maintains resources on the issue at
https://www.arrl.org/HOA.
The outcome matters to satellite operators as much as to anyone.
While the amateur satellite service can be worked with modest
equipment, including handheld antennas that no covenant can
reach, a permanently mounted array for the linear transponders or
a dish for future geostationary and high-orbit payloads is
exactly the kind of installation that association approval
processes most often delay or deny. The bill's fate will likely
be decided in the remaining weeks of the current Congress, after
which it would have to be reintroduced.
[ANS thanks Amateur Radio Daily, Amateur Radio Newsline, the
Community Associations Institute, and ARRL for the above
information.]
Changes to AMSAT TLE Distribution for October 30, 2026
Two Line Elements or TLEs, often referred to as Keplerian
elements or keps in the amateur community, are the inputs to the
SGP4 standard mathematical model of spacecraft orbits used by
most amateur tracking programs. Weekly updates are completely
adequate for most amateur satellites. TLE bulletin files are
updated daily in the first hour of the UTC day. New bulletin
files will be posted immediately after reliable elements become
available for new amateur satellites. More information may be
found at https://www.amsat.org/keplerian-elements-resources/.
This week there are no additions or deletions to the AMSAT Keps
distribution.
General Perturbations Data Support
AMSAT is pleased to announce that modern forms of what are called
General Perturbations data are being disseminated via modern
formats including JSON, XML and KVN at
https://newark192.amsat.org/gpdata/current/. The reason this
change is being made is that we are running out of 5-digit
catalog numbers and the TLE format is not viable for satellites
launched after July of this year. See
https://celestrak.org/NORAD/documentation/gp-data-formats.php for
details.
These data are presently considered in beta test for the next few
months while hosted on the test server newark192.amsat.org, and
we are very open to community feedback at webmaster at amsat.org.
Testers may experience outages and errors while we make
improvements. We intend to put this into production on our main
web server in July as we expect that satellites launched after
this summer will require one of the new formats to accommodate
longer object numbers. AMSAT will continue to publish TLE
bulletins for satellites launched before July 2026 indefinitely.
[ANS thanks Joe Fitzgerald, KM1P, AMSAT Orbital Elements Manager,
for the above information.]
Buying from DX Engineering?Add AMSATâ€Ös Getting Started With
Amateur Satellites to your order.Available for $30 from DX
Engineering (free shipping on most orders over
$99)https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/amt-satellites
ARISS News
Amateurs and others around the world may listen in on contacts
between amateurs operating in schools and allowing students to
interact with astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International
Space Station. The downlink frequency on which to listen is
145.800 MHz worldwide.
Scheduled Contacts
No contacts are currently scheduled.
Many times, a school makes a last-minute decision to do a
Livestream or runs into a last-minute glitch requiring a change
of the URL, but we at ARISS may not get the URL in time for
publication. You can always check https://live.ariss.org/ to see
if a school is Livestreaming.
As always, if there is an EVA, a docking, or an undocking, the
ARISS radios are turned off as part of the safety protocol.
Spacewalks to install the station's final two roll-out solar
arrays took place on Thursday, October 29, and are scheduled for
Thursday, November 5 (see the lead story above); expect the ARISS
radios to be off during those operations.
The crossband repeater remains configured in the Columbus Module
(145.990 MHz up {PL 67} & 437.800 MHz down). If a crewmember
decides to pick up the microphone and turn up the volume, you may
hear them on the air – so keep listening, as you never know
when activity might occur.
Kenwood D710GA in the Zvezda Service Module – Call sign
RS0ISS. Please note we're still in the process of troubleshooting
and testing this radio. With the SSTV Series 34 event complete,
APRS is once again active on 437.825 MHz. Feel free to check out
status reports at https://ariss-usa.org/ARISS_APRS/.
HamTV in the Columbus Module (2395.00 MHz) is currently
transmitting a test signal. For more information, visit the ARISS
Ham TV Live site at https://live.ariss.org/hamtv/.
Note, all times are approximate. It is recommended that you do
your own orbital prediction or start listening about 10 minutes
before the listed time.
The latest information on the operating mode can be found at
https://www.ariss.org/current-status-of-iss-stations.html
The latest list of frequencies in use can be found at
https://www.ariss.org/contact-the-iss.html
[ANS thanks Charlie Sufana, AJ9N, one of the ARISS operation team
mentors, for the above information.]
Want to fly the colors on your own grid expedition? Get an AMSAT
car flag and other neat stuff from our Zazzle store!
25% of the purchase price of each product goes towards Keeping
Amateur Radio in Space
AMSAT Ambassador Activities
AMSAT Ambassadors provide presentations, demonstrate
communicating through amateur satellites, and host information
tables at club meetings, hamfests, conventions, maker faires, and
other events.
JARSfest (Johnston Amateur Radio Society Hamfest) –
November 7, 2026The Farm at 95215 Batten Rd.Selma, NC
27576https://jars.net/jarsfest-2026KF4EAGSouthern Arizona Fall
Hamfest – November 14, 2026Oro Valley Amateur Radio
ClubMarana Middle School11285 W. Grier Rd.Marana,
AZhttps://www.tucsonhamradio.org/hamfestN1UW
Interested in becoming an AMSAT Ambassador? AMSAT Ambassadors
provide presentations, demonstrate communicating through amateur
satellites, and host information tables at club meetings,
hamfests, conventions, maker faires, and other events. For more
information go to:Â https://www.amsat.org/ambassador/
[ANS thanks Bo Lowrey, W4FCL, Director – AMSAT Ambassador
Program, for the above information.]
Satellite Shorts from All Over
+ Peter Goodhall, MM9SQL, released version 1.1.5 of OscarWatch
Tracker on October 29. New features include custom SSTV save
folders, chroma smoothing for cleaner Robot/PD pictures, an FT4
CQ blocklist, live DXCC logging, audio silence warnings, and
improved USB soundcard recovery. The release also includes SSTV
sync fixes that prevent noisy Robot 36 pictures from being
misidentified as Robot 72. Download:
https://github.com/magicbug/OscarWatch-
Tracker/releases/tag/v1.1.5 [ANS thanks Peter Goodhall, MM9SQL,
for the above information.]
+ With growing use, MM9SQL directed users of OscarWatch Tracker
to the dedicated support system at https://oscarwatch.org/support
rather than social media for questions and issues. Documentation
is available at https://oscarwatch.org/docs/tracker. [ANS thanks
Peter Goodhall, MM9SQL, for the above information.]
+ Japan's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft is on its
way to Phobos. The JAXA probe lifted off aboard the tenth H3
rocket from Tanegashima Space Center at 19:41 UTC on October 19,
carrying the German-French Idefix rover developed by DLR and
CNES. MMX is due to arrive at Mars in the summer of 2027, where
it will study both Martian moons from orbit with eight
instruments before releasing Idefix onto Phobos around the turn
of 2028-2029 from a height of 40 to 100 meters. The rover, which
carries a Raman spectrometer and a radiometer, is expected to be
the first wheeled vehicle to drive on a Martian moon, in gravity
less than one-thousandth of Earth's and through temperature
swings of more than 200 degrees Celsius over Phobos's seven-hour
day. MMX itself will then land to collect at least 10 grams of
regolith for return to Earth in 2031, helping to answer whether
Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids or the debris of a giant
impact on Mars. [ANS thanks DLR and JAXA for the above
information.]
+ Fifty-eight Scouts from the Dan Beard Council in Cincinnati got
on the air October 17-18 for Jamboree on the Air, operating from
two sites: forty worked the station at the National Voice of
America Museum of Broadcasting in West Chester, Ohio, as WC8VOA
alongside the West Chester Amateur Radio Club, while eighteen
more operated as KY4BSA from a campout at Camp Friedlander in
Loveland. For Scouts from Troop 674, the weekend capped three
classroom sessions on radio safety, propagation, regulation, and
careers, and participation now satisfies a requirement for the
Citizenship in the World merit badge. The council's Radio
Scouting Committee, chaired by Shawn Grubb, KE8BBC, has put 255
Scouts and 61 adults on the air across thirteen activations since
January and plans Radio merit badge sessions in January and March
2027 and Winter Field Day operations January 23-24. [ANS thanks
the Dan Beard Council Radio Scouting Committee and Amateur Radio
Daily for the above information.]
+ Roughly one in eighteen U.S. amateurs who apply to renew their
licenses never manage to pay the FCC's $35 fee, according to an
analysis of two years of FCC weekly archive data by Rob
Rosenberger, K4HST, published October 23 by Amateur Radio Daily.
Rosenberger found that an average of 3,901 amateurs per month
renewed successfully, 227 per month applied but failed in the
payment step, and 783 per month never applied at all. More
striking, 92 percent of those who failed a payment once simply
walked away rather than try again, and over the two-year period
1,431 callsigns lapsed after payment failures while another 1,221
remain in the grace period. Rosenberger blames a "payment
labyrinth" that routes applicants through two FCC portals with
two sets of credentials, and urges clubs to reach out to local
operators nearing the end of their grace periods using the free
PDF callbooks he publishes. The full analysis is at
https://daily.hamweekly.com/. [ANS thanks Amateur Radio Daily and
K4HST for the above information.]
+ The Radio Club of America will present its 2026 awards and
induct seven new Fellows at its annual banquet at the Westin
Times Square in New York City on November 21. Fourteen awards
will be presented, led by the Armstrong Medal, the club's highest
honor, to Dr. Andrea Goldsmith, the first woman to receive it in
the award's history. Other honorees include Dr. Ajay Poddar (Dr.
Arno Penzias Award for basic research in the radio sciences),
Audrey McElroy (Carole Perry Young Professional Award, honoring a
graduate of RCA's Youth Activities Program who has gone on to a
career in wireless), Jack Winters (Lifetime Achievement Award),
and Charles Counselman (Dr. Ulrich Rohde Award for Innovation in
Applied Radio Science and Engineering). Details and banquet
registration are at https://www.radioclubofamerica.org/. [ANS
thanks the Radio Club of America for the above information.]
+ APRS Connect, the messaging-first APRS client that launched on
Android in August, is now available for iPhone (iOS 16.4 or
later). The free app works over APRS-IS, while connecting a radio
and several advanced features are part of a subscription tier
with a seven-day trial. Of interest to satellite operators, the
app plots the ISS on its map, can connect to Bluetooth LE KISS
TNCs or work through a radio's speaker and microphone using a
built-in 1200-baud AFSK modem with VOX keying, and can turn the
phone into an IGate or a digipeater. Also new are a coverage map
showing where your beacons were heard, a grid-square screen,
VoiceOver and TalkBack accessibility, and guided screens for APRS
services such as the SMS, email, and Winlink gateways. More
information is at https://aprsconnect.com/. [ANS thanks APRS
Connect and Amateur Radio Daily for the above information.]
+ A helicopter pilot was killed on the evening of October 15 when
his aircraft struck a 150-foot guyed tower behind the Myakka
City, Florida, home of well-known contester Dan Street, K1TO, who
also owns a tower installation company. The 63-year-old pilot,
the only person aboard, had just completed a mosquito-control
spraying route when the accident occurred shortly before 9 p.m.
in Manatee County, according to the sheriff's office; the tower,
the tallest of three on the property, collapsed. The Wireless
Estimator, an industry website, noted that towers under 200 feet
are not required by the FAA to be lit or registered in the FCC's
Antenna Structure Registration system and that the towers were in
compliance with those rules. The National Transportation Safety
Board is investigating and typically issues a preliminary report
within about 30 days. [ANS thanks Amateur Radio Newsline and The
Wireless Estimator for the above information.]
+ The Radio Society of Great Britain has launched a monthly
newsletter for its members aged 25 and under, produced by the
society's Youth Committee. Early issues, which feature members'
accounts of activities ranging from a youth camp in the Austrian
Alps to first check-ins on DMR nets along with a calendar of
upcoming events, are being posted publicly on the RSGB website,
with later editions to be delivered directly to youth members.
Story submissions may be sent to Youth Committee chair Leon Shaw,
M0VUF, at youth.chair [at] rsgb.org.uk. [ANS thanks Amateur Radio
Newsline and the RSGB for the above information.]
Join AMSAT today at https://launch.amsat.org/
In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership to:
Societies (a recognized group, clubs or organization).
Students are eligible for FREE membership up to age 25.
Memberships are available for annual and lifetime terms.
Contact info [at] amsat.org for additional membership
information.
73 and remember to help Keep Amateur Radio in Space!
This week's ANS Editor,
Paul Stoetzer, N8HM n8hm [at] amsat.org
ANS is a service of AMSAT, the Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation, 712 H Street NE, Suite 1653, Washington, DC 20002.
AMSAT is a registered trademark of the Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation.
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73 DE HP2DFA-5 / BPQ32 AMSAT MONITOR PANAMA
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