IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination
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IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination |
| Ex-Alta 3 | Updated: 23 Jul 2025 | Responsible Operator | Keith Tweed VA6MPL | |
| Supporting Organisation | University of Alberta (AlbertaSat) | |||
| Contact Person | VA6MPL@SYSTEM32.CA.nospam | |||
| Headline Details: A 3U CubeSat mission. Educational component: The Ex-Alta 3 mission is a student project with an educational mission of supporting the training and development of highly qualified personnel by providing students with the opportunity to design, build, and operate a spacecraft. This mission is the University of Alberta’s contribution to the CubeSats Initiative in Canada for STEM (CUBICS), a Canadian Space Agency program. Scientific and Technology component: Ex-Alta 3 has a primary scientific mission of imaging ice and snow using a student-built multispectral imager, and characterizing magnetic field activity using a digital fluxgate magnetometer (DFGM) developed by the University of Alberta. Payload data will be open source and publicly available. All data will be transmitted over amateur bands (amateur UHF will be used for uplink and downlink of TT&C. The amateur S-Band frequencies would be used for the downlink of scientific payload data.)Ex-Alta 3 will also fly several in-house, open-source designs developed by AlbertaSat’s volunteer students. Amateur Component: A prominent goal of this project is to support the amateur radio community in Canada, by providing students with experiential amateur radio training through satellite communications. This will be achieved through certifying students as amateur radio operators, training students in the operations procedures for the spacecraft, as well as the development and maintenance of our ground stations. Additionally, the Ex-Alta 3 telemetry beacons will be transmitted as AX.25 packets, allowing the amateur radio community to receive beacon packets from the satellite. A leaderboard will be available on the AlbertaSat website for amateurs to submit their decoded packets for points. Students are also encouraged to become involved in the local amateur radio community, and we have participated in events such as fox hunts together with the Northern Alberta Radio Club to encourage students to use their certifications outside of AlbertaSat. One of the goals for the Ex-Alta 3 mission is to support the amateur radio community in Canada by allowing and encouraging students to gain experience with amateur radio through satellite communications. Throughout the project, the group aims to certify and educate students on operating in amateur radio bands. The team will work to achieve this goal alongside our partners at the Northern Alberta Radio Club (NARC). With the help of NARC, AlbertaSat (the Ex-Alta 3 team) has coordinated Amateur Radio certification exams for the last several years. Students can take their basic, advanced, and morse exams. The student members of AlbertaSat are encouraged to obtain their amateur certificate to allow them to participate in satellite operations. In this way, the Ex-Alta 3 mission increases interest and contributes more members to the Amateur Radio community. Thus far, AlbertaSat has helped over 40 members achieve their amateur radio operator’s certificate. Outside of AlbertaSat’s members, amateur operators will be able to participate in the Ex-Alta 3 mission in several ways. Namely, the spacecraft will have AX.25 beacons, with a decoder that will be made available to amateurs. During operations, a leaderboard will be available on the AlbertaSat website for amateurs to submit their decoded packets for points. Additionally, as one of AlbertaSat’s in-house technology demonstrations, Ex-Alta 3 will fly a novel dual-band patch antenna that conforms to the CubeSat standards and utilizes amateur UHF and S-Band frequencies. If successful, this open-source design can be used by other CubeSats and small satellites to communicate in the amateur bands. Proposing a UHF downlink using GFSK between 1k2 and 19k6 bps and an S-Band downlink using QPSK at 5 or 10 Mbps. Planning an ExoLaunch deployment in summer 2026 into a high inclination 550-600km orbit. More info at https://albertasat.ca/ex-alta-3/ | ||||
| Application Date: | 28 May 2025 | Freq coordination completed on | ||
The IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination Status pages are hosted
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