AMSAT says that China will likely launch a new ham radio satellite in 2009. The ham radio space agency says that it has received a report from Michael Chen, BD5RV, that indicates the CAS-1 amateur radio bird has completed its IARU frequency coordination and the hardware has been finished.
The payload of CAS-1 will likely include a CW telemetry beacon, a linear transponder, an FM repeater and a digital store and forward transponder. These operations will use 2 meters for uplinks and 70
centimeters for downlinks at 500mW output power.

The satellite is expected to be launched from China into a sun synchronous orbit with a 670 km apogee. According to Chen the CAS-1 team is waiting for another payload to be finished before launch date is officially set.

[F5NZO]

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