IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination
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IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination |
| Solar Flare and Ionosphere Explorer (SoFIE) | Updated: 27 Jul 2026 | Responsible Operator | Kevin Suresh KD3DHW | |
| Supporting Organisation | Saint Francis University | |||
| Contact Person | kxs602@francis.edu.nospam | |||
| Headline Details: The primary objective of our 3U CubeSat mission is to expose SFU’s students to the art and science of developing a space flight mission as a part of the undergraduate experience and encourage them to pursue careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). This objective is extended to local high school students by providing them an opportunity to build, test, and fly two experiments as a part of the mission. Finally, the STEM objective is also extended to the global amateur radio operator community by providing opportunities for them to become Citizen Scientists and conduct joint experiments throughout the mission lifetime. The science objective of the SFU-1 mission is to investigate how solar flares and solar activity affect the upper region of the Earth’s atmosphere – the ionosphere. To do this, the spacecraft will observe HF radio burst emissions from the Sun, known to be associated with solar flares. The spacecraft will also collect radio transmission from the ground using a broadband 3-30MHz receiver. We are actively collaborating with the University of Scranton HamSCI initiative to engage the United States and global amateur radio community to participate in this program. We will coordinate with Hams to conduct transionospheric experiments in multiple HF amateur bands. All HF data collected during the SoFIE mission will be made freely available to all Hams via the HamSCI interface that is being established. Comparing emissions from the Sun to ground-based transmissions, we will be able to determine how the ionosphere is changing as a function of solar activity. Finally, SoFIE is a hybrid mission utilizing a secondary, independent payload (a 9.303 MHz topside sounding instrument authorized under an FCC Part 5 Experimental license). The primary communications, telemetry, tracking, and control loops utilize coordinated UHF and S-band amateur-satellite service frequencies to provide open, unencrypted data access and educational orbital tracking for the global amateur radio community. Proposing a UHF downlink with 9k6 BPSK AX25 telemetry and an S Band downlink using 1 Mbps QPSK CCSDS. Planning a NASA launch no earlier than Q2 2026 into a 500 km polar orbit. More info at https://sites.google.com/francis.edu/cubesat/home | ||||
| Application Date: | 27 Jul 2026 | Freq coordination completed on | ||
The IARU Amateur Satellite Frequency Coordination Status pages are hosted
by AMSAT-UK as a service to the world wide Amateur Satellite Community
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