AMSAT has announced that Jonathan Brandenburg, KF5IDY, has been designated as Assistant Vice President — Engineering to oversee a new program tentatively named “Fox Plus.”

Jerry Buxton, N0JY, AMSAT’s Vice President — Engineering, said, “Jonathan brought a new idea to me for continuous LEO [low-Earth orbit] presence through a refresh of AMSAT’s Fox-1 FM satellite. In using the basic Fox-1 bus design, the ability to fly not only student STEM experiments but our own radio experiments as well, provides an opportunity to refresh the presence of LEO ‘Easy-Sat’ type communications and bring in new volunteer engineers to develop the new transceiver and power supply needed to resurrect Fox-1 type CubeSats.”

Brandenburg told Buxton that he intends to target frequent deliveries of Fox Plus CubeSats into orbit, wide use of open-source in the program, and utilizing the ASCENT platform for development of future iterations of Fox Plus. The 2022 Engineering budget includes funds for the program’s startup. — Thanks to AMSAT News Service