Ham Hears Mars Orbiter 45 Million Miles From Earth

Richard L. James writes "As reported on the Mars-net email list Flight Refuelling Amateur Radio Society's resident satcom + WLAN guru Paul J. Marsh (M0EYT) has managed to detect and receive NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on X band at a staggering range of 45 million miles from Earth using a home made receiver setup and a RFspace SDR-14 software radio."

So...

[ToasterofDOOM (878240)]

...how soon can I get this sort of range/reliability for my home Wifi?

FAKE!

[Linker3000 (626634)]

Working on the (alleged by some) premise that we never went to the moon - how do we know that NASA isn't pumping out a fake, weak signal from a research lab just to fool us!!? I won't believe it until we get some triangulation on that signal!

Nice ...

[by Anonymous Coward]

and here I can't get a decent fucking picture from DirecTV.

Obligatory

[by Anonymous Coward]

"Can you hear me now?"

Re:Obligatory

[aarku (151823)]

More obligatory: "Mmmmmm.... orbiting ham.... *garalrahhararar*"

How long before he is silenced?

[pawstar (930281)]

So, how long will it take for this guy to be reprimanded for space war driving of satellites ?

Just like Apollo

[by Anonymous Coward]

How many of you remember the articles in QST and Ham Radio from the 1970's about the ham radio operators that received and decoded the pulse-coded modulation transmissions directly from the moon during the Apollo missions? Yeah, I think we really did go there.

This new feat comes on the heels of the success of ham radio in Louisiana. I've been licensed since high school in the early 1970's. These new-fangled computers are nice and convenient, but nothing beats ham radio! It works where nothing else will.

Ray

Re:Just like Apollo

[JourneyExpertApe (906162)]

How many of you remember the articles in QST and Ham Radio from the 1970's about...

I'm willing to wager: not many. For most slashdotters, the first season of Friends is retro kitsch.

"H3y, r3m3mbr wh3n w3 w3r3 k1d5 wh3n 7hey 1nv3n73d dvdburn3rs?"
"n0, dvdbyrn3rs h4ve 4lw4y5 3xis73d. PWN3D!!!!11"
"0h y34h, i f0rg0t."

Whick link to click ?

[gibodean (224873)]

It's nice having so many links embedded in the summary, but which one links to where it's actually reported ? I'd expect a link on the "reported" word.....

Start eating your chips...

[postbigbang (761081)]

because that's one helluva Pringle's can. Defcon contests, you're over.

The problem...

[staticsage (889437)]

The problem with this layout is that there's too much shit to click on. Seriously, who's ever going to click on all those links? The worst blogs are the ones that make every other word a hyperlink to another website so by the time you finish reading this sentence, you've forgotten what you were reading, or why you were reading it in the first place. Hey, this article is great but you know what would make it better? If I could read another article in the middle of it. Great design, morons. [thebestpag...iverse.net]

Worked All Planets Yet?

[wa2flq (313837)]

Gonna need a lot fo postage on that QSL Card....

Muppets?

[Jah-Wren Ryel (80510)]

Did anyone else read that title as:
"Ham Nears Mars Orbit 45 Million Miles From Earth"

I thought it was going to a story about Piiiigs in Spaaaaace!

I understand

[by Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot [slashdot.org] is a public forum [publicforuminstitute.org] where everything [everything2.com] is dicussed [aol.com] in far too much depth [de220.com] and 90% [90percenttrue.com] of it is pointless [pointless.com]

Re:Security risk?

[user9918277462 (834092)]

All NASA communications are encrypted. One of the highest priorities during recovery of the Columbia wreckage was to find and secure the NSA "black box" that encrypted radio traffic between the shuttle and ground control.

Can you imagine the damage some antisocial radio vandal could do to the Mars Rovers, for instance, if the command traffic was sent in the clear?

Not quite

[slightlyspacey (799665)]

As with most things in life, the correct answer is "it depends". All NASA communcations to/from the shuttle are NOT necessarily encrypted but can be. Uplink from the ground to the shuttle always is encrypted (we don't want someone sending bogus commands). In addition, the crew has the option of disabling all commands coming from the ground. Direct downlink from the shuttle to the ground can be encrypted but that is not always done. It depends on the mission configuration. DOD-based classified missions back in the 80s always were encrypted on both the uplink and downlink.

There are also other communications paths between the shuttle and the ground. Indirect communications, known as forward and return links via, TDRSS are always encrypted.

Re:Security risk?

[cyclone96 (129449)]

I'm sort of splitting hairs here, but only the command link is secured on most NASA satellites. The telemetry back to the ground isn't necessarily encrypted (it isn't on the shuttle and ISS), although you'd definitely need to have some pretty expensive equipment and know-how to decode the carrier into anything useful (like voice and data). Then again, it's only fun because it's hard...

There's a few more details on how it works for ISS in a NASA training manual here [mit.edu]. (It's a 6 Mb pdf, communications is section 4).

Re:Security risk?

[dr_d_19 (206418)]

All NASA communications are encrypted.

I broke that encryption years ago. According to my findings, proximity and movement correction data was sent as YARDS and not METERS.

Re:Security risk?

[Lehk228 (705449)]

apparantly they use the same symmetric key for more than one vehicle.

Re:Security risk?

[nacturation (646836)]

Someone just learned a hard grammer lesson on slashdot for EVERYONE to see - how humiliating.

Meanwhile, in another post, a humiliating spelling lesson is underway.
 

Re:Slashdotted

[Jeng (926980)]

Which one?

Re:Transcript

[dogwelder99 (896835)]

Orbiter:

Dear Sir,

Confidential Interplanetary Business Proposal

Having consulted with my colleagues and based on the information gathered from the Martian Chambers Of Commerce And Industry, I have the privilege to request your assistance to transfer the sum of $47,500,000.00 (forty seven million, five hundred thousand Earth dollars) into your accounts. The above sum resulted from an over-invoiced contract, executed, commissioned and paid for about five years (5) ago by an alien contractor. This action was however intentional and since then the fund has been in a suspended account at The Central Bank Of Mars...

Re:Transcript

[tnsimonson (731364)]

Base Station: So what're you wearing?

Orbiter: I've got on a slinky little number.

Base Station: Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.

Are you insane?

[955301 (209856)]

The guy, a human being with clothes and bad breath and pimples as a kid and all of those things that level the playing field for all of us, is communicating with something 45 million miles away!

Even the most boring, predictable, well-funded case of this occurring should be celebrated with what is left of the adverturer in you.

"So what". Puh! Why exactly are you at Slashdot then?

Re:Power being wasted?

[NixieBunny (859050)]

Perhaps you meant to say "some random microwave receiver expert", not "some random dude". This is not everyday work - I build stuff like this for radiotelescopes. But I'm surprised that he used a tiny 1 meter diameter dish to receive the signal - I was expecting at least a standard old-fashioned 3 meter satellite dish to have been used to improve the signal level at the receiver.

I am waiting patiently for the equipment webpage to load so that I can see what sort of filters he used. That's the main tricky part for doing such an experiment - you need to build a custom filter to reject everything that isn't in the spacecraft's frequency band. The rest of the equipment is apparently a modified satellite TV receiver and a generic software radio.