Listening to Mars...that's DX!

[kenglish]

SpaceWeather.com -- News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Look back to the 2-17-2021 articles.

Scott Tilley, VE7TIL, in Roberts Creek, BC is listening in on the spacecraft that are currently exploring mars. He's the guy who found a "long lost" NASA bird a couple of years ago.

 

[crainbebo]

I find it amusing that he's using a 60cm "big" antenna/dish. Many, many years ago, rural viewers used 7-10 foot dishes to watch TV!
Albeit it's cool that a Mars orbit could be received here on Earth. Whenever a man gets to go to Mars, I wonder how long the delay will be?

 

[kenglish]

22.54 minutes, round trip.
Check out the live data on this NASA site:

Deep Space Network Now

The real time status of communications with our deep space explorers

eyes.nasa.gov

I get goosebumps looking at the dishes, as they move around throughout the day and night.

 

[oldradiotapes]

https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=17&month=02&year=2021

Ham radio operators are doing something that until recently only big Deep Space Networks could do.

Amateurs have tracked the mission ever since

(SDRs), which have become the norm for hams in the past decade

and they give hams the kind of exquisite control over frequency required to tune into distant spacecraft.

Amateurs began listening to deep space probes in the late 1990s

good target for hams hoping to bag their first Martian spacecraft.

Just to be clear (since the article implies otherwise), there's no requirement that one be an hammy op or have a callsign to monitor X-band signals any more than the C and Kn bands, or operate an SDR. This is something anybody with the knowledge, motivation and patience can do. Same with the other dude observing the Space-X telemetry feeds. The fact that these guys being reported on are hammies is entirely circumstantial.

I'm sure you guys all know this; I'm just posting it for the benefit of other people who might happen across this thread via a search engine, then read the article and get the wrong impression.