AMSAT Vice President-Operations Drew Glasbrenner, KO4MA, has
declared that Fox-1D (AO-92) is now open for general Amateur Radio use. That word followed an announcement from AMSAT Vice President-Engineering Jerry Buxton, N0JY, that AO-92 had been commissioned and formally turned over to AMSAT Operations.
Initially, the U/v FM transponder will be open continuously for 1-week. After that, operation will be shared among the U/v FM transponder, L-Band Downshifter, Virginia Tech Camera, and the University of Iowa’s High Energy Radiation CubeSat Instrument (HERCI).
AO-92 was launched from India on January 12. For the past 2 weeks, the AMSAT Engineering and Operations teams have been testing the various modes and experiments on board. Testing has shown that both the U/v FM transponder and L-Band Downshifter are working well. The Virginia Tech camera has returned photos of Earth and data from HERCI has been successfully downlinked.
AMSAT thanked the 178 stations around the world that used FoxTelem to collect telemetry and experiment data from AO-92 during the commissioning process.
AMSAT News Service, AMSAT-BB, AMSAT’s Twitter account (@AMSAT), the
AMSAT-NA Facebook group, and the AMSAT website will report any updates.