Jerry Buxton N0JY on NASA TV

Radio amateurs Jerry Buxton, N0JY and Courtney Duncan, N5BF were on the panel at a NASA prelaunch briefing on Wednesday, October 7.

Participants in the news briefing discussed several of the specific CubeSats aboard the National Reconnaissance Office’s NRO-L55 mission. Four of the CubeSats are NASA-sponsored and nine are NRO-sponsored, one of which was developed with NASA funding. The mission is scheduled to launch Oct. 8 from California’s Vandenburg Air Force Base.

The panel comprised:
• Richard Welle, director, Microsatellite Systems department at The Aerospace Corporation
• Tim Olson, principal investigator for BisonSat, Salish Kootenai College, Pablo, Montana
• Morgan Johnson, team lead for the ARC CubeSat, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
• Jerry Buxton, N0JY vice president, Engineering, for AMSAT Fox-1
• Courtney Duncan, N5BF, principal investigator for LMRST-Sat, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

Jerry described the Fox-1A mission and science, and answered questions.

Watch CubeSats on a Mission!