GEOSCAN digital image transmissions for Cosmonautics Day (11~13) via RS51S, 52, 59, 67, 68, 78

Geoscan launches a large-scale amateur radio program for Cosmonautics Day!

In honor of this professional holiday, from April 11 to 13, six satellites on the Geoscan platform (StratoSat TK-1, Colibri-S, Gorizont, RTU MIREA-1, TUSUR GO, Vizard-ion), located in orbit, will broadcast children’s drawings on the theme of space. Some of them are planned to transmit special postcards, for the reception of which the ICA teams will be awarded commemorative QSL cards.

The diploma event is held to popularize amateur radio and attract attention to the Space-π project.

:arrow_right:How to take part in the program?

For three days, 12 unique pictures will be transmitted over the territory of the Russian Federation every two minutes. The task: to receive them all.

Conditions for receiving the diploma:
:radio_button:Receive all images (distortions in the last 20% of the file are allowed).
:radio_button:Send the results to space@sonik.space, indicating the date and time of reception, as well as the QTH locator of the station where the signal was received.

Instructions for receiving images from satellites.

Join the festive amateur radio event!

from telegram:geoscanspace

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STRATOSAT-TK1 IMAGE
09:20:12 UTC

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To clarify the situation.

*** correction from 2025-04-13 ***

There will be 12 unique images from all 6 satellites**.

9 of them are children’s drawings, the 3 others are special images (No. 3, 4 and 12).
If you receive them all and send them to space@sonik.space, you’ll get a diploma.

Additionally to the diploma, you can receive three QSL cards for the 3 special images from the satellite teams as follows.

from spacepi.space

2025-04-12T08:51 RS52S

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is it transmitt just over Rusian territory only?

The transmission was confirmed in Japan. For example StratoSat TK-1, Colibri-S.

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thank you for your information. but i never seen the signal for Digital Image…


onlly a beacon from StratoSat-TK1

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If I’m not mistaken, transmissions are only made in the Russian region.

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Add frame length parameter to GEOSCAN deframer

A couple of months ago GEOSCAN framing has been modified, more details via this link.

My best guess is, that this isn’t modified within the geoscan soundmodem version and could explain why only StratoSat-TK1 (old framing) is decoded.

For those using gr-satellites, there we do have the new parameter, some yaml files can be found at the following location

Jan | PE0SAT.

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I’m using gr satellites for decoding and load afterwards the kiss files into baskiton’s SatsDecoder to extract the images.

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Good to see this an option.

Andy, UZ7HO has created an updated GEOSCAN hs_soundmodem that support the alternative frame size as used by for example RTU-MIREA1.

Below a RTU-MIREA1 audio replay.

I am not yet sure if this version will work on both frame sizes or just one, if so you will need two version of this soundmodem software.

I just got a confirmation that you will need two version, the previous versions can be found at this location.

Jan | PE0SAT

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Is it the same frame size that in gr-satellites?

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Indeed gr-satellites already has this option, as an example the following yaml files.

name: STRATOSAT-TK1
alternative_names:
   - RS52S
norad: 57167
data:
   &tlm Telemetry:
     unknown
transmitters:
   9k6 FSK downlink:
     frequency: 435.870e+6
     modulation: FSK
     baudrate: 9600
     deviation: 4800
     framing: GEOSCAN
     frame size: 66
     data:
     - *tlm
name: RTU-MIREA1
alternative_names:
  - RS51S
norad: 61785
data:
   &tlm AX25 Telemetry:
     telemetry: ax25
transmitters:
   9k6 FSK downlink:
     frequency: 436.200e+6
     modulation: FSK
     baudrate: 9600
     framing: GEOSCAN
     deviation: 4800
     frame size: 74
     data:
     - *tlm
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2025-04-11 06:34 UTC - RTU MIREA-1 - Replay of recorded IQ in :greece:

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2025-04-11 06:39 UTC - TUSUR GO - Replay of recorded IQ in :greece:

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2025-04-11 19:34 UTC - RTU MIREA-1 - Replay of recorded IQ in :greece:

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will this work with TUSUR as well?

Yes, it’s working with RS78S, too.