Anyone heard of an amateur radio satellite operating on 5 GHz band?

 The amateur radio satellites which I have operated so far have uplink and downlink in the VHF and UHF bands. Some of my friends also operate on the Qatar Oscar 100 Geostationary Amateur Radio Satellite which has a uplink on 2.4 GHz band and downlink on 10 GHz band. It was only today that I came across a post by ZL2BJO on the AMSAT bulletin board mentioning about the 10 GHz downlink of CatSat. As usual, that prompted a read around and soon I came to the webpage of The University of Arizona mentioning about HAM Radio Community and CatSat. It has been mentioned that in addition to the 10 GHz primary science patch antenna and radio, CatSat has a 5 GHz patch antenna that will enable the spacecraft to operate for limited periods of time as a linear transponder. It will be possible for radio amateurs based on Earth to communicate through the transponder when it is enabled.


CatSat is a 6U Cubesat measuring 30 x 20 x 10 cm launched on 3rd July 2024 by  Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket. It has a nearly sun-synchronous polar orbit around the Earth. Just like the International Space Station, it flies around the Earth every 90 minutes. Checked Argentinian Amsat webpage which I use to track satellite information, but CatSat is not listed there. Though it is there in the drop down for submission on AMSAT Live OSCAR Satellite Status Page, I could not see any reports submitted there. Our National Frequency Allocation Plan 2022 mentions "5 830-5 850 MHz (shared with other services) for amateur and amateur-satellite (space-to-Earth)". Wonder whether the CatSat 5GHz linear transponder is in that range. I am hearing of a 5 GHz amateur radio satellite linear transponder for the first time. Would like to hear from anyone who knows more about this unique amateur radio satellite transponder, even though I do not have the setup to listen to it. Not sure whether the high end WebSDRs out there will be able to receive it.





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