DeepEarthScience

So, the last few weeks were quite exciting at the DopTrack satellite tracking station. We have updated the software, such that the station is now able to automatically record any satellite we tell it to record. Also, the radio antennas are installed higher in the sky for better visibility. Moreover, TUDelft students have designed software to automatically extract the carrier signal from raw recordings. And last but not least, the development of the website for the Virtual Laboratory DopTrack is started, but I will report on that later on, when we have a working website. All major steps to have our project become a real educational tool for satellite tracking.  Software update: Automated satellite tracking The DopTrack station is now able to automatically compute, when a satellite is flying over and start recording it accordingly. We just have to set a line of code in the rec.list file and DopTrack is doing the rest. An example recording list is: Delfi-C3     ...

A few weeks ago the second TUDelft satellite (Delfi-n3Xt) was successfully launched into an orbit around Earth. In space, yes! This satellite was designed and built by students of my university. However, their other 5-year-old satellite (Delfi-C3) is still flying and communicating its data towards Earth. A student, a colleague and I are using this old satellite to test our idea for a new satellite-orbit determination-project. I always like to call it: "Listening to the sound of satellites" (see previous posts).  During the launch event I was thinking that it would be cool to capture both satellites' transmission in one observation using the VHF antennas. So I ask the ground station operator (the student), if this was possible. After a few days he send me this figure: He found a day that both satellites were visible from the TUDelft ground station. The red line is the orbit track of the Delfi-n3Xt (new one). The green cross is the location of the TUDelft ground...