Receiving telemetry from moon-orbiting satellites

Here's our next challenge - decoding telemetry from two Chinese ham satellites orbiting the moon! See http://lilacsat.hit.edu.cn/wp/ for more info.

Briefly, I think this will involve the following:

  • Setting PST Rotator to track the moon. This is pretty easy in the Tracking menu. Obviously we can only hear this satellite when the moon is above the horizon, which is usually pretty easy to see.
  • Running the JT-4 software. This isn't yet installed on the W2MMD satellite computer, partly because I think that most of this work will be done by home users on their own computers accessing the W2MMD satellite computer remotely (see other posts on remote access).
  • We might need a larger antenna. Some of the successful stations have been running pretty big 70 cm antennas.
LONGJIANG 1 - NORAD CAT ID 43471
LONGJIANG 2 - NORAD CAT ID 43472

More to follow. Just getting started here.

Here's more on these satellites:
https://gbtimes.com/change-4-lunar-microsatellite-may-be-lost-queqiao-continues-toward-lagrange-point-beyond-moon

Asking for help tracking the satellites: http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2018/may/help-requested-to-monitor-for-signals-from-chinese-lunar-sats.htm#.W3BRLOhKiUk

Pictures from the satellites: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2018/20180614-longjiang-2-earth-pics.html

ARRL announcement: http://www.arrl.org/news/post-launch-signals-received-as-amateur-radio-heads-to-moon

AMSAK - UK - lots of detail: https://amsat-uk.org/2018/04/03/dslwp-lunar-amateur-radio-satellites/

9/4/18 - Another interesting article here: https://gbtimes.com/a-tiny-chinese-satellite-is-orbiting-the-moon-and-allowing-radio-amateurs-download-images

10/17/18: Another article: https://hackaday.com/2018/10/15/hams-see-dark-side-of-the-moon-without-pink-floyd/

11/17/18 - Wondering if this is the same satellite -looks like a different catalog number: https://amsat-uk.org/2018/05/19/dslwp-satellites-lunar-orbit/

Yes they are the same satellites: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/dslwp-a.htm

Here are people who have received these signals: http://lilacsat.hit.edu.cn/wp/?page_id=844


This guy decoded with 7 element yagi: https://destevez.net/2018/06/dslwp-b-detected-with-7-element-yagi/






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