OSCAR (satellite)
designation of amateur radio satellites
OSCAR (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) is a traditional designation given to many amateur radio satellites. Only satellites that enter or leave Earth's orbit fall into the OSCAR category, not suborbital spacecraft.
OSCAR satellites are administered globally by the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, commonly known as AMSAT.
The first OSCAR satellite
The first satellite, designated OSCAR, was built by American amateur radio operators and launched into space on December 12, 1961, piggybacking on the United States Air Force's Discoverer 36 satellite. OSCAR 1 measured approximately 30 by 25 by 12 centimetres (11.8 by 9.8 by 4.7 in), weighed 4.5 kilograms (9.9 lb), orbited at altitudes between 234 to 414 kilometres (145 to 257 mi), and transmitted at a power of 140 milliwatts (0.00019 hp) on a frequency of 145 megahertz (2.07 m). It burned up in the atmosphere after seven weeks. During this time, the battery-powered satellite transmitted the Morse code letters "H" and "I" at a rate that varied depending on the temperature.
List of OSCAR satellites
As of 11 June 2025, 125 satellites were launched, each receiving an OSCAR number upon reaching orbit. Details of each OSCAR satellite, including their names, launch dates, and status of the amateur radio payload is available at the list of OSCAR satellites.
See also
AMSAT
References
External links
"Übersicht aller OSCARs". AMSAT Germany (in German).
“OSCAR (satellite)” enters the record as designation of amateur radio satellites. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what OSCAR, satellite and designation can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“OSCAR (satellite)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, OSCAR, satellite and designation provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q137701228. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1961 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “OSCAR (satellite)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.