AMSAT hopes to develop a CubeSat that will become a secondary payload on board one of NASA's next Artemis missions. In a letter of intent submitted recently to the space agency, AMSAT said that the high-Earth deployment offered by the missions would align well with AMSAT's own goals to bring ham radio satellites into increasingly higher orbits.
The proposed CubeSat payload would be a 6U-class spacecraft, weighing less than 14 kilograms, or 30 pounds. It should have deployable solar arrays and an amateur radio communications system developed by AMSAT to support VHF uplinks and UHF downlinks. The CubeSat would also have a 5 GHz uplink and a 10 GHz downlink. Hams around the world would be asked to provide telemetry reception using AMSAT's analysis tools.
AMSAT responded to a NASA request for interested parties for its Artemis 3, 4 and 5 missions, which can accommodate 6U and 12U size CubeSats.
