Date: November 2022
Amount: $236,400

Kyushu Institute of Technology (KIT) promotes the proliferation of amateur radio CubeSat technologies among countries with emerging economies to bring diversity to the space sector and to democratize the usage of space. They see tremendous potential in satellite APRS experiments to provide an opportunity to offer hands-on training for satellite communications.

The goal of this grant is to provide more hands-on opportunities for countries with emerging economies to participate in an amateur radio satellite project and make amateur radio satellites affordable to everyone. KIT will build and operate a 2U CubeSat, BIRDS-X, and hold two competitions: (1) APRS mission payload competition and (2) APRS ground terminal competition. They will also demonstrate a new low-cost UHF transceiver in orbit. The project results will be made available to the general public through an existing opensource framework for satellite bus technology.

Learn more at: https://www.birds-project.com/.