AMSAT-NA has designated the ARTSAT2: DESPATCH (DEep SPace Amateur Troubadour’s CHallenge) satellite as Fuji OSCAR 81 or FO-81. OSCAR Number Administrator Bill Tynan, W3XO, said the Japanese deep-space satellite “appears to have met all of the requirements for an OSCAR  number, including IARU coordination.” Tynan said he applied the “Fuji” designation “in recognition of the long history of contributions the Japanese have made to Amateur Radio satellites.”

Launched on December 3, FO-81 is the second spacecraft in the ARTSAT series. It went into space with the Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe. A primary mission of DESPATCH is to collect signals from the spacecraft from around the world and to reconstruct the original data transmitted from the spacecraft. “Reception of such weak signals to reconstruct data from the spacecraft will require the expertise of exceptionally skilled ham operators,” the satellite’s developers have said in seeking the cooperation radio amateurs around the world.