Satellite Operator Guide

Early stage of the project

It's strongly advised to get in touch with the AMSAT of you country at the beginning of your project. It enables that the radio amateur requirements are taken in account at the early stage on your project. It avoids false expectations.

Frequency

First you need to know if you want to use a radio amateur frequency. This kind of frequency obey to special rules : no commercial use, and the satellite must be used by the radio amateur community more than 20% of it time. The service from the satellite can be a repeater, or any other experiment.

You need to ask the AMSAT of your country to help you to get a radio amateur frequency coordination from IARU your allocation. It will take time : usually between one year and six months.

If you don't ask for an IARU coordination, the launcher of your satellite will not allow you to launch the satellite. In the past this was allowed, but today it's no more possible.

Open your transmissions

To comply with regulations, you will need to make publicly available all the TM packet format, we advise you to use a Kaitai Struct for it. You also need to give any gnuradio flow chart that are useful to receive your data, and any picture decoder software if available. The preferred programming language for them is python. It's also a good practice to give raw recording of transmission to be able to test all the software chain.

Integration in the Satnogs network

You need to create a post on the community forum with all this details : - satellite name - frequencies - modulations - link to TM format - link to picture decoder

You are welcome to discuss with us on IRC (#satnogs on freenode)