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Hrm, amateurs launching things into space... I wonder if anyone's done that. Does hopping a ride on someone else's rocket count as long as it's your satellite?

-l

Hrm, amateurs launching things into space... I wonder if anyone's done that. Does hopping a ride on someone else's rocket count as long as it's your satellite?

-l

The Delfi-C3 sat is relying on the Amateur Radio operators around the world to help capture telemetry and forward it to their earth station. Pretty cool, in my book.

The Delfi-C3 sat is relying on the Amateur Radio operators around the world to help capture telemetry and forward it to their earth station. Pretty cool, in my book.

Progress is more or less Soyuz without a re-entry system. Those russkies believe in reusable systems - reusability of the design rather than idiotic reusability of the vehicle.

details

If you do have a license and a radio, between 75% and 100% of astronauts on any given shuttle mission, and ISS crews, are licensed amateur radio operators, and they will talk to you if they have time.

Speaking of satellites, amateur radio groups have launched dozens of their own, and indeed the ISS space station is also one-- there's several repeaters on board for voice, digital, and code. Amateur satellites are often called OSCAR with a number: Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio. The thing I think is funny is that hams often refer to OSCAR-0, meaning the original orbital target, the moon. Moonbounce operation takes a bit more than 5 watts though. Some hams have HUGE arrays of antennae ("aluminum farms") for the this mode. The surface of the moon is not an efficient reflector, but there isn't much atmosphere to diffuse your signal, and people do it all the time. There's something like 20 major ham radio satellites in operational status and more in various other states. They operate on HF, VHF, UHF, and microwave frequencies from 21.138 MHz to 24048.025 MHz

More on amateur satellites here: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/index.php

73 de N9QQB

Milwaukee MAARS 145.130 repeater, 1000 watts of RF Goodness at your fingertips.

If you work with Amsat you can have your work shot into orbit. There are about 18 currently in operation, with launches starting in the 60's. Amsat is an international organization.

If you work with Amsat you can have your work shot into orbit. There are about 18 currently in operation, with launches starting in the 60's. Amsat is an international organization.

If you work with Amsat you can have your work shot into orbit. There are about 18 currently in operation, with launches starting in the 60's. Amsat is an international organization.

Amsat.org has a page which features a little blurb as well as sounds from the first satellites. For Sputnik, there are two signal recordings.

See http://www.amsat.org/amsat/features/sounds/firstsat.html
This page has the two recordings both in .wav and .ra formats.

Ham radio operators have been launching amateur satellites for decades. The rules of space operation are out there for anyone who wants to dig into them.

Isn't that just for geo stationary satellites? Wouldn't something like a hamsat be outside of any one country's control?

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Math ematical_Thinking/designing_a_high_altitude.htm

http://www.amsat.org/amsat/balloons/balloon.htm

We are surrounded, indeed, inundated with technology, but for the vast majority of people, their only interest is to consume it. They don't care how it works. Hams care how things work.

You can do some incredibly cool things with ham radio, and my ham background (VE7LDH) has served me well in my work (telecommunications). But as an active ham? I haven't attended a ham club meeting in years. The same old grey haired people (almost all men), the same old cliques, the same old conversations (many of which were more about computers than ham radio anyway). Too many throwbacks stuck in the Good Old Days of the 1950s. Transistors? DSP? What's that?

AMSAT has enormous geek potential, but in my entire involvement with ham radio (since 1993) the party line has been "give us more money and maybe some day we'll launch the super-duper satellite of your dreams". They launched one, all-but-bankrupted the organization doing it, it worked for a while, then it partially stopped working, then it packed up completely. Now they're back in Give Us Money mode.

I want ham radio to be interesting. I think it's a great incubator for techies. Real in-depth geeks, not techie-as-fashion-statement. But at the moment, I'm not finding it as interesting as I'd like to. I think that's a shame. I wonder what happened.

...laura

Yes, amateur radio is still relevant. Where else do you get to play with satellites? Amateur radio is one of the few places (outside of NASA) where you can experiment with radio links through real satellites in orbit around the Earth. That's not something you can do over the Internet. The upcoming Phase 5A (P5A) launch will be a mission to Mars. You can't do *THAT* over the Internet. See http://www.go-mars.org/ (It's German. Use the fish!). More info on amateur radio and satellites is available at AMSAT's web site at http://www.amsat.org./

for more information:
magnetic bearing space applications:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/sats/phase3d/wheels/

magnetic bearings: passice and active:
http://www.calnetix.com/typesofbearings.cfm

The following update was posted to the AMSAT Bulletin Board and now appears on the AMSAT HomePage.

SuitSat Status 4 Feb 2005
---For Immediate Release---

Silver Spring, Maryland
4 February 2006 at 22:00 UTC

Paraphrasing Mark Twain....the demise of SuitSat-1 is high exaggerated!!

It is now nearly 24 hours since the successful deployment of the SuitSat-1
experiment. These past 24 hours have been a wild ride of
emotions...tremendous highs...deep lows when people reported no signals and
said SuitSat-1 was dead and now....some optimism.

It is absolutely clear that SuitSat-1 is alive. It was successfully turned
on by the ISS crew prior to deploy and the timing, micro-controller
functions and audio appear to be operating nominally. The prime issue
appears to be an extremely weak signal.

I have heard several recordings and have monitored two passes today. When
the signal is above the noise level, you can clearly hear partials of the
student voices, the station ID and the SSTV signal. One of the
complicating factors in reception is the very deep fades that occur due to
the spin of SuitSat.

Based on the information we know thus far, one can narrow down the issue to
the antenna, the feedline, the transmitter output power and/or any of the
connections in between. Through your help, we would like to narrow down
the issue further and also gather some internal telemetry from the
Suit. If the transmitter is running at full power, we would expect the
Suit to end operations in the next few days to a week. If it is not, then
it will operate much longer. Since we do not know how long this experiment
will last, we ask for those with powerful receive stations to listen for
Suitsat---especially during direct overhead passes when the Suit is closest
to your area. If you can record these passes and send the audio to us, it
would be most appreciated. We will continue to be optimistic that this
issue will right itself before the batteries are depleted. So please KEEP
LISTENING!

Based on what we have learned, we would like to provide the following
guidelines to save you time and facilitate gathering information.
1) You need as high a gain antenna as possible with mast mounted
pre-amps. An arrow is the minimal set...it provides very brief snipets of
the communications. HTs and scanners won't cut it.
2) I would not waste your time on passes below 40 degrees
elevation. SuitSat is too far from your station to receive a reliable
signal. We have found that closest approach provides several seconds of
SuitSat communication with 22 element yagis.
3) The "gold" we are looking for right now is the telemetry information
and how long the vehicle stays operational. So if you hear any of the
telemetry, please let us know.

We are also working to get the voice repeater set up on ISS to downlink
SuitSat audio on 437.80 in the event that the ISS Kenwood radio can receive
the SuitSat transmissions. The repeater may be operational as early as
mid-day Sunday. Please do NOT transmit on 145.99, voice or packet, until
we have confirmed that SuitSat is no longer transmitting. These
transmissions interfere with our ability to hear SuitSat.

While the transmission part of the SuitSat experiment has not been stellar,
SuitSat-1 has been tremendously successful in several areas. Some of these
successes include:

-We have captured the imagination of students and the general public
worldwide through this unique experiment
-The media attention to the SuitSat project represents one of the biggest
ever for amateur radio
-We have had well over 2 million internet hits on www.suitsat.org today
-Our student's creative artwork, signatures and voices have been carried in
space and are on-board the spacesuit---the students are now space travelers
as the Suit rotates and orbits the Earth
-Carr

This wasn't an "experiment" this was "throwing a radio out an airlock as a PR stunt". The fact that they failed at even something that simple is rather sad.

Do you know who "they" are?

"They" are amateurs (AMSAT), not NASA or the Russian Space Agency.

The suit itself: http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/BauerSuits at/index.php

People that heard suitsat - looks like it went offline about 1hr 15min into flight.

http://suitsat.org/

As an Ham Radio operator, this project is interesting. While a microsat could be deployed, it takes many many man hours to design, build, test and deploy a microsat.

Information about suitsat, which has a lot fewer features then a typical microsat is avaiable here:

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/BauerSuits at/index.php

73 de KB1CVH/6

Frankly, I believe space exploration is far too important to be left to private companies.

I disagree. Air transporation and food production are also quite important, and yet we seem to be doing fine with them being handled by private industry. Of course, there's government interference in those industries, but whether or not such interference is necessary is an argument for another day.

You, like many others, also seem to be making an assumption that all private groups are also for-profit, which is false. Non-profit groups engage in research and exploration as well, and I hope we'll see them engage in more space exploration as launch prices decrease.

For example, AMSAT has launched a number of amateur radio satellites. The Planetary Society (attempted) to launch the first solar sail, funded by member donations. Elon Musk started up a self-funded project to put an experimental greenhouse on Mars, but decided it would be better for now to focus on reducing launch costs via his SpaceX company -- hopefully he'll pursue the greenhouse project again in the future.

If there was a privtely owned space station in orbit instead of the ISS, would they be doing science, or giving trips to rich tourists?

That depends on whoever owns the space station. If it's owned by Richard Branson, it'll probably be for tourism. If it's owned by the Howard Hughes Institute, they'll probably be doing medical research. In the past, Bigelow Aerospace has stated that they'll sell their space station modules to pretty much whoever for $100 million each, and they should be up and running in the next few years.

I'd like to claim that this is a victory for ham radio. In a way it is, as it is a radio accomplishment and the fellow is not paid for this. But as it doesn't involve any transmission, it's more of an SWL (ShortWave Listener) accomplishment than an Amateur Radio accomplishment.

AMSAT-DL (Germany)

In July 2002 the AMSAT-DL (Germany) board of directors gave its official green light to develop and build the two spacecrafts AMSAT-Phase 3-E (P3E) and AMSAT-Phase 5-A (P5A). Both satellites will be created in a common development process by an international team under the leadership of AMSAT-DL.

The P3E satellite is to be launched as communication and scientific platform into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth.

The second project with the working name "AMSAT- Phase 5-A" is destined to enter an orbit around the planet Mars. This spacecraft will then transmit scientific data to Earth - data from experiments on-board P5A as well as - via its repeater function - from experiments on the Martian surface or the planet's atmosphere.

People have done a lot of thinking about this, and one of the slicker solutions I've seen (and played with) is the Pacsat Broadcast Protocol suite.

The general idea was that a single downlink could serve all ground stations in the footprint, and that the data were of general interest. So it broadcast data for anybody who wanted it. Exactly what it chose to broadcast was based on requests from ground stations. The downlink protocol also allowed ground stations to piece files together from multiple passes, particularly important when your downlink bit rate is only 1200 bps.

You could have a completely passive ground station that received data broadcast as a result of other stations' requests. This works well for general stuff like bulletins and things.

...laura

Indeed, the hams have been busy lately... see www.amsat.org for a look at what they've been up to lately. And speaking of webservers, PACSAT PBBS protocol is pretty much your garden variety BBS. Retro, but effective. You can hear FM Voice satellites like AO-51 on a garden variety Radio Shack scanner.

• Sofware Defined Radio kits
• Elecraft kits
• PSK31
• APRS
• ARISS
• AMSAT

Here is the CHEAP answer:
YES

You should have no trouble hearing the ISS, The Shuttle or any satellites using Ham Radio.

You need to know when to listen. Yes you can get keps and computer software and learn how to use it, however it's real easy for average Joe to just go to http://www.heavens-above.com/ and look it up. They tell you when and in what direction. ---It's great because you can see the ISS and other orbiting things too.

These satellites use several frequecies accross several bands. The most common ones you'd be interested in will be in the 2-Meter (145 MHz) and 70 centimeter (437 MHz) bands -as it's easy to get scanners that can pick up those frequencies. Luckily many of the satellites do transmit FM (as opposed to sideband or other mode) which is exactly what a cheap scanner likes.

You may hear voices! this makes it easy, because the scanner is all you need.

You may hear packet-splats --- when you hear them the term will make perfect sense.

You can hook the headphone jack of your scanner into the line in on your computer's sound card! There are many freeware OSS programs to decode it too. Sure, a dedicated Terminal Node Controller (TNC) is nice and even cheap, but free is always better when you're just playing with it to see what it is! info on using your soundcard for packet http://www.soundcardpacket.info/

You may want to know about other OSCARs out there (Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) see: http://www.amsat.org/

Satellites aren't using high power, don't try to listen from your scanner with it's antenna in the basement -it won't work.

Use an external antenna if possible -It's a scanner not a transmitter, if all else fails, try a hunk of wire

Doppler shift... yes you heard me DOPPLER SHIFT... these things move fast! the signal may be off by more than 15kHz from where it's supposed to be... As the satellite approches, it will be higher, as it receeds it will be lower. It will be helpful to have a scanner that has a VFO... a way to rotate the dial and keep up with the satellite... otherwise program several channels 5 kHz apart both above and below the expected frequency so you can get to the next one quickly. Th more you can move in frequency to keep up with the satellite the longer you can hear it.

Downlinks
ISS: 145.800 MHz
PCSAT2: 437.975 MHz
AO-51: 435.300 MHz

What you hear -if anything- depends on what they are doing at the time. You aren't going to hear astronaut John Phillips, KE5DRY if he's having supper with the shuttle crew, or sleeping, or went home on a soyuz, or doing just about anything else. - Sometimes the satellites are shut off... while they fix it, or they experiment, they are on s-band or under power resrictions... whatever

Sorry about the blown link in the last paragraph, the link is for AMSAT-DL.

In the past, hams have had some high earth orbiting birds up as well, which have allowed worldwide QSOs. Oscar 4, AO-10, AO-13, and AO-40 were high earth orbiting satellites, capable of worldwide QSOs and extended operating windows up to 10 hours long or more. Sadly, none of these satellites is currently considered operational. Of these, AO-10 is brain dead and has no attitude control, but occasionally the solar panels and the antennas line up in a favorable orientation as it tumbles through space, and communications are occasionally possible. AO-13 and AO-4 have reentered the atmosphere, after partial failure of their secondary boosters, but provided some service. AO-40 suffered a crippling explosion onboard about a month after launch, but was partially recovered and provided an S-band downlink, along with uplinks on 70cm, 23cm, and 3cm IIRC. It suffered a catastrophic battery failure in January, 2004 and has been silent ever since.

Not to be discouraged, a new satellite, currently designated as Phase 3E is being prepared for launch by and will hopefully reach orbit later in 2005 or early 2006.

In the past, hams have had some high earth orbiting birds up as well, which have allowed worldwide QSOs. Oscar 4, AO-10, AO-13, and AO-40 were high earth orbiting satellites, capable of worldwide QSOs and extended operating windows up to 10 hours long or more. Sadly, none of these satellites is currently considered operational. Of these, AO-10 is brain dead and has no attitude control, but occasionally the solar panels and the antennas line up in a favorable orientation as it tumbles through space, and communications are occasionally possible. AO-13 and AO-4 have reentered the atmosphere, after partial failure of their secondary boosters, but provided some service. AO-40 suffered a crippling explosion onboard about a month after launch, but was partially recovered and provided an S-band downlink, along with uplinks on 70cm, 23cm, and 3cm IIRC. It suffered a catastrophic battery failure in January, 2004 and has been silent ever since.

Not to be discouraged, a new satellite, currently designated as Phase 3E is being prepared for launch by and will hopefully reach orbit later in 2005 or early 2006.

In the past, hams have had some high earth orbiting birds up as well, which have allowed worldwide QSOs. Oscar 4, AO-10, AO-13, and AO-40 were high earth orbiting satellites, capable of worldwide QSOs and extended operating windows up to 10 hours long or more. Sadly, none of these satellites is currently considered operational. Of these, AO-10 is brain dead and has no attitude control, but occasionally the solar panels and the antennas line up in a favorable orientation as it tumbles through space, and communications are occasionally possible. AO-13 and AO-4 have reentered the atmosphere, after partial failure of their secondary boosters, but provided some service. AO-40 suffered a crippling explosion onboard about a month after launch, but was partially recovered and provided an S-band downlink, along with uplinks on 70cm, 23cm, and 3cm IIRC. It suffered a catastrophic battery failure in January, 2004 and has been silent ever since.

Not to be discouraged, a new satellite, currently designated as Phase 3E is being prepared for launch by and will hopefully reach orbit later in 2005 or early 2006.

A mission to Mars

14 privately owned satellites in orbit

Experiments and payload aboard the International Space Station (and Space Shuttles when they fly again)

A worldwide GPS based tracking system

An independent worldwide wireless data network

No? Are you even still reading this? If so then ask yourself this, does your "hobby" provide emergency communications during disasters? Does it? DOES IT? Was it THERE during the TSUNAMIS like amateur radio was?

What about after the hurricanes? After Charlie tore trough Port Charlotte and knocked down all local sheriff and fire radio towers ham radio operators were there cranking up new towers, equipping the sheriff and first responders with new radios so they could save lives. They even used that tracking system I mentioned on all of the vehicles involved in rescue operations so that way the first responders could coordinate their vehicles more efficiently...

But you've probably stopped reading. Like I could care. All I want to do is enlighten those who read your comment, give them a different point of view. Show them that Amateur Radio DOES matter, is an important part of our lives and will be around a long, long time. BPL or no.

The same rocket launch also put into place ham satellite for use in South Asia. There are other satellites available for personal use (AMSAT has several, including (Echo 51) but VUSat is focused on use from India and South Asia.

The same rocket launch also put into place ham satellite for use in South Asia. There are other satellites available for personal use (AMSAT has several, including (Echo 51) but VUSat is focused on use from India and South Asia.

The same rocket launch also put into place ham satellite for use in South Asia. There are other satellites available for personal use (AMSAT has several, including (Echo 51) but VUSat is focused on use from India and South Asia.

plover writes "Due to Congressional legislation passed quietly in 2003, the Air Force Space Command will no longer distribute space surveillance data via NASA. There was supposedly a three year transitional period when the data was to be made available via a NASA web site, but earlier this month their transitional server went down hard. NASA has decided not to rebuild it. (It was scheduled to be shut down on 31 March 2005 anyway.) The only way to obtain satellite data now is by signing up with the official Space-Track website. Part of the agreement to necessary to obtain data from their site is not to redistribute it. Of course, amateurs are still free to redistribute their observations, including those of classified satellites."

ISS Astronaut Ed Lu has written an entire essay about food on the space station. Other sources indicate that microgravity seems to make everything taste bland - Hot sauces (and spicy foods) seem to be what a lot of the crew members crave.

but don't you have to me going *really fucking fast* if you want to make any noticeable doppler shift in light?

Certainly, satellites around the Earth qualify -- if you want to be truly successful working with amateur (ham) satellites, you need to adjust for the doppler shifts., especially at the higher frequencies. If you don't, you'll only be successful when the doppler shift is small -- basically, when the satellite is as high in the sky as it's going to get in this pass.

Suppose your signal is at 441 mHz, and the signal is only 20 kHz wide. It only takes a 0.005% shift in the frequency to move that signal 20 kHz so you can't detect it at all, and doppler shifts seen by objects in low Earth orbit satellites can be a good deal larger than that.

SCTP is indeed interesting. I've tangled with it when playing with SIGTRAN, i.e. SS7 over IP. The nightmares ceased a while ago. :-)

One of the more interesting special-purpose protocols I've ever messed with was the PACSAT Broadcast protocol, used for downloading files from satellites.

It makes the assumption that downloaded files are of general interest, so it broadcasts them. Which files it broadcasts is in response to requests from ground stations. Ground stations can also request fills, pieces of files they haven't received yet. The protocols have hooks to allow files to be downloaded in pieces, over several orbits, since individual passes rarely exceed 20 minutes, and the downlink bit rate isn't all that high. This all runs over a protocol analogous to UDP.

You can get files by just listening, if you want to.

...laura

powerful signals are not necessarily needed for a satellite to pick up. Keep in mind that (generally) any satellite link is going to be line-of-sight so there is little to disrupt any signal already propagating between the source and the satellite itself. Also, amateur radio operators have been talking with sattelites for years. You could even talk to the MIR space station when it was in operation.

this site lists an amateur radio satellite with link power between 1/2 and 1 watt on frequencies higher than the 120ish mhz of the distress signal. It really doesn't take much to receive a low-output signal with the proper listening equipment.

I'm just trying to put things into perspective, so that hopefully the tinfoil hat can be taken off :)

I hope the idea of nanosats doesn't get too popular

Hopefully there will be at least one amateur radio satellite with the 50 they're going to launch -- this form factor would seem to be ideal.

Obviously you have never heard about the first amateur radio satellite, OSCAR (Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) or any of it's brothers. How long has this been going on? AMSAT is going to have it's 35th anniversary meeting this year. http://www.amsat.org/ Sig? We don't need no stinking sig!

Please explain how 3.5 minute joyrides in a dead-end vehicle that comes nowhere near orbit are going to lead to more space exploration. Please don't repeat the tired old cliche that we need humans in space to interest the public in space science. That's what got us a useless space station that nobody cares about and a grounded shuttle fleet that's not much more useful even when it flies. A lack of astronauts on the Mars rovers or Cassini didn't seem to stop a lot of folks from becoming intensely interested in those missions because, unlike the manned program, they're actually doing some real space exploration!

This is a preliminary working document to fund a UNMANNED (Un nerded as well) satellite to Mars. This by a world wide organization of largely volunteer (some academic) folks who are mostly amateur radio operators and who have launching communications satellites for 35 years.

That's longer than the average slash dot reader has been sentient. According to the AMSAT-Germany website some of their members have been listening in on the Mars Express satellites with home brew gear. Previously, other amateurs have listened in on many (if not most) other deep space sats. Thus, the technology to both build, launch and control a Martian mission isn't as much of a stretch as folks would like to believe. No, it won't be Spirit or Oportunity and heck, it might just blow up on the pad, but I think it's an incredible next step for an organization that has been outperforming several government funded efforts for decades.

What's stupid about that? Just getting there is pretty simple, just fire your boosters at the right time... And AMSAT has a history dating back to the 1960's of building space crafts... They're not sending people there... And yes, IAARS.

Amsat have private satellites in orbit since 1961 (ok, not technically amsat, since they didn't form until 1969, but still...). They usually get the launches for free on board a launcher that has some room to spare (their satellites are pretty small).

And about the other story: WOW. I would love the chance to send up a four-inch cube into space. God alone knows what the hell I would do with it -- I'm no electronics guy -- but the possibilities are simply too cool to be believed. I'd be tempted to go back to university and get an engineering degree just to be able to be part of a project like that.

But hey, who says that's necessary? $40K for a launch, even U$, isn't that much if you get a bunch of people together. There's people that chip in to buy an airplane -- how long 'til we see people (besides the good folks running OSCAR, that is) getting together to build and launch their own cubesat? God knows I'd be there in a heartbeat...

Checkout AMSAT. You can't get more FOSS than an amateur radio satellite.

Well, a fully amateur satellite effort, anyway. Here.

Every time theres an amateur radio story posted to /., either about morse code or BPL, all these haters show up and start saying ham radio is dead and that its a waste to give all these airwaves to these "hams".

Where are the haters in this thread? Oh OHHH its because we launched a ROCKET INTO SPACE. Has your hobby done that? HMM!? What about dozens of satellites, space station experiments and space shuttle experiments? What about being a vital part of our nation's emergency communications network?

I didn't think so. To all the rest, thank you for the resepect. I'm not trying to say ham radio is the best hobby, I'm just saying the haters need to recognize. :P