OPS-SAT is planned to be a 3U CubeSat with deployed solar arrays to be launched in 2016 into a low earth orbit.

Although the formal closing dates for expressions of interest from potential experimenters for this project has now closed, contact has been made with Dave Evans at ESA-ESOC who has confirmed that they would be very interested to receive proposals from an AMSAT team to develop a novel use of this spacecraft for amateur radio purposes.

In addition to an X Band downlink and S Band uplinks and downlinks, the spacecraft will carry a simplex transceiver operating with 4k8/9k6 telemetry using GMSK on the 435MHz band.

It s understood that experimenters will have access to an onboard processor running Linux/Java at 500 to 800MHz.

The project is open to teams led by a group from any ESA member country and initial info is shown here http://www.esa.int/About_Us/GSP/Wanted_ESA_seeks_innovators_for_orbiting_lab... although the detailed design is being rapidly iterated.

It is emphasised that this is a very open project which will require lots of interaction between the contributing groups.

Bright ideas are needed from our software experts and If there is sufficient interest it may be possible to host a Skype conference about this opportunity during the AMSAT-UK Colloquium over the weekend of July 20/21st.

It is not proposed that this should be an AMSAT-UK led project, but I would be happy to provide some initial coordination!

73

Graham

G3VZV