SpaceX to launch AMSAT-EA EASAT-2 and Hades satellites

Spain’s national amateur radio society URE says SpaceX expect to launch the EASAT-2 and Hades satellites in December 2020.

AMSAT-EA, the URE satellite group, is building the satellites together with the European University of Madrid. The launch has been managed through the space broker Alba Orbital based in Glasgow.

EASAT-2 and Hades will be launched into a sun-synchronous orbit between 500 km and 600 km and their main function is to act as analog and digital repeaters for radio amateurs. There is also a camera for SSTV transmissions provided by the Czech Republic that has already flown on the United States Marine Academy PSAT-2 satellite, and has now been adapted to fit into the PocketQube satellites.

Both satellites are based on the PocketQube 1.5P (7.5 x 5 x 5 cm) architecture and represent an evolution of the previous GENESIS platform, whose GENESIS-L and GENESIS-N satellites are expected to fly before the end of the year with Firefly, in a joint collaboration with Fossa Systems and LibreSpace, which also launch their own satellites, all of them within the Picobus dispenser, developed by the latter.

IARU has coordinated these frequencies:
• Hades – uplink 145.925 MHz, downlink 436.888 MHz
• EASAT-2 – uplink 145.875 MHz, downlink 436.666 MHz

IARU Satellite Frequency Coordination pages http://www.amsat.org.uk/iaru/