AMSAT reports that its Fox-1C (Fox-1Cliff — named in honor of the late AMSAT pioneer and benefactor Cliff Buttschardt, K7RR) and Fox-1D satellites are ready for delivery to Spaceflight Industries for integration into the Sherpa payload dispenser which will be making its maiden flight. Fox-1Cliff and Fox-1D successfully finished environmental testing on February 8. Launch is set for later this year on a SpaceX Falcon 9.

Until delivery, the CubeSats will be sealed in anti-static bags, opened occasionally to charge the batteries so they will be fully topped off for delivery. Launched into sun synchronous orbits,

Fox-1Cliff and Fox-1D will carry the same FM repeater as Fox-1A (AO-85), in addition to a Virginia Tech camera experiment that will take images of Earth for high-speed downlink. Fox-1Cliff will also contain a radiation experiment from Vanderbilt University ISDE, like the one in AO-85, and Fox-1D will host the University of Iowa High-Energy Radiation CubeSat Instrument experiment to map the Van Allen radiation belts.

The Fox Engineering Team now has shifted its focus to RadFxSat/Fox-1B, currently set to launch in January 2017. — Thanks to AMSAT News Service