on march 25th, 2009 a team from the german space organisation amsat-dl
reached another milestone on its way to an own interplanetary probe
towards planet mars. the ground station at the bochum observatory
transmitted radio signals to venus. after traveling almost 100 million
kilometers and a round trip delay of about 5 minutes, they were clearly
received as echoes from the surface of venus. receiving planetary echoes
is a première in germany and europe. in addition, this is the farthest
distance crossed by radio amateurs, over 100 times further than echoes
from the moon (eme reflexions).
for receiving the eve (earth-venus-earth) reflections, an fft analysis
with an integration time of 5 minutes was used. after integrating for 2
minutes only, the reflected signals were clearly visible in the display.
despite the bad weather, signals from venus could be detected from
1038ut on until the planet reached the local horizon.
the high power amplifier which is described in the current amsat-dl
journal has therefore passed this crucial test as a final key component
for the planned p5-a mars mission. by receiving generated echoes from
venus, the ground and command station for the mars probe has been
cleared for operational use and the amsat-team is now gearing up for
building the p5-a space probe.
for financing the actual construction and launch, amsat-dl is currently
in negotiation with the dlr (deutsches zentrum für luft- und raumfahrt)
among others, to obtain financial support for the remaining budget of 20
mill eur.
amsat-dl wants to show that low-budget interplanetary exploration is
possible with its approach.
more information and the link to the official press release:
http://www.amsat-dl.org//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=166&itemid=97the eve experiment was repeated on thursday, march 26th for several
hours with good echoes from venus. morse code was used to transmit the
well known „hi“ signature known from the amsat oscar satellites.
73s de db2os
