History Repeats Itself Russia operates a constellation of satellites in high Earth orbit called Meridian (меридиан). These satellites perform a critical communications purpose for Russia as much of its land mass is not well served by geostationary satellites. Therefore, you would think this constellation would be held to the highest operational level. Well it’s not … Read more

Off Station In mid August 2021, the Chang’e 5 service module without any notice was noted to not be on station near the Sun-Earth L1 point where it had been since mid-March 2021. Observers were quick to reacquire the spacecraft’s X-band beacon and it was not long before it was clear from the data that … Read more

It’s be a quarter of a year since LES-5 was recovered and we began decoding telemetry.  The spacecraft sends 128 words (8 bit bytes) every 10.24 seconds which is called a format.  That format is comprised of four frames of 32 words.  Of the 128 words eight are used for syncing and 24 used for … Read more

Iran’s new military satellite, NOUR 01, most interesting fact may not be that it resembles a college engineering experiment but rather that it may have a connection to a Mexican military payload launched quietly from New Zealand last year. It’s also with great pleasure that I can share Scott Chapman, K4KDR’s story of how he … Read more