ISS SSTV - NASA on the air & SCaN SSTV event Oct 27

Satellites & Observations
#1

SSTV will be active starting October 27 around 10:00 UTC. The images will highlight the NASA on the air activity celebrating 60 years of NASA. The event will also celebrate NASA SCaN contributions to the ARISS program. More details to follow as they are known.

Source: ARISS SSTV blogspot

In detail

SSTV will be active starting October 27 around 10:00 UTC. The images will highlight the NASA on the air activity celebrating 60 years of NASA. The event will also celebrate NASA SCaN contributions to the ARISS program. More details to follow as they are known.

Below is the full news release from ARISS:

ARISS News Release No. 18-12

Dave Jordan, AA4KN

ARISS PR

aa4kn@amsat.org

ARISS SSTV Joins with NASA On The Air for a Special Event

Oct. 19, 2018:

Amateur Radio OnThe International Space Station (ARISS) is planning a very special Slow Scan TV event currently scheduled to start October 27 about 10 am UTC. Helping to support the event will be NASA’s Space, Communication and Navigation (SCaN) Dept.

The Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program manages NASA’s three most important communications networks. The Space Network (SN), Near Earth Network (NEN), and the Deep Space Network (DSN.

Just as in past ARISS SSTV commemorations, 12 images will be downlinked, but this time with 6 featuring the SCaN educational activities while the other 6 images will commemorate major NASA anniversaries, ie when NASA was established, astronauts first landing on the moon, etc.

In addition to the fun of receiving these images, participants can qualify for a special endorsement for the NASA On The Air (NOTA) celebration event. To learn more about NOTA, visit ( https://nasaontheair.wordpress.com).

Once received, Images can be posted and viewed at http://www.spaceflightsoftware.com/ARISS_SSTV/index.php .The transmissions are expected to be broadcast at the usual frequency of 145.800 MHz using the PD-120 SSTV mode.

Please note that the event is dependent on other activities, schedules and crew responsibilities on the ISS and are subject to change at any time.

More information will follow soon, so please continue to check for news and the most current information on the AMSAT.org and ARISS.org websites, the AMSAT-BB@amsat.org, the ARISS facebook at Amateur Radio On The International Space Station (ARISS) and ARISS twitter @ARISS_status.

About ARISS

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support theInternational Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors are the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the Center for the Advancement of Science in space (CASIS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students in classrooms or public forms. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities learn about space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For more information, see www.ariss.org.

Also join us on Facebook: Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS)

Follow us on Twitter: ARISS_status

Media Contact:

Dave Jordan, AA4KN

ARISS PR

Oct. 23 Update
Looks like the event will run continuously from Oct 27 starting around 10:00 UTC and ending Oct 29 around 19:30 UTC.

Oct 25 Update
Certificates for receiving images will be available. See details posted at https://ariss.pzk.org.pl/sstv/ for complete information.

Oct 27 Update
Seems the event started with a bit of confusion. Images were initially being down linked on the wrong frequency. Another complication is that the MMSSTV overlay was active and covering some of the images. Seems these are trying to be fixed so hopefully everyone can try to capture images as they were intended to be transmitted.

Some statistics and info:

  • The transmissions were started on the wrong frequency, 145.480MHz instead of 145.800Mhz and also had MMSSTV overlay. The frequency was corrected around 2018-10-27 11:55 UTC. The overlay issue wasn’t fixed.
  • The transmissions were stopped sometime in UTC afternoon 2018-10-27 and re-started early in UTC morning 2018-10-28.
  • 12 images were transmitted. Satnogs stations managed to receive all of them completely or partially.
  • Unless someone in Australia was transmitting SSTV images with the doppler shifted frequency of ISS and almost the same MMSSTV overlay, then some of the ISS transmissions over Australia after the restart were other images than the ones of the event. You can check those by opening observations with “with other images” in the observations bellow. In some of them we can see both the Australian themed images and the ones from the event.

For the announced time:

  • Total duration of the event: 57h and 30min
  • Total coverage from satnogs network: 10h 5min which is ~17.53% of the total announced event time.
  • Total time of observations (includes overlapped observations): 52h 44min 7sec
  • Total satnogs observations vetted as good: 304
  • Total satnogs observations with images decoded: 277 observations with 535 images decoded which is ~1.93 decoded images per observation for announced time

After restart until the end:

  • Total duration of the event: 38h from the first good transmission after restart on 2018-10-28 we got in satnogs
  • Total coverage from satnogs network: 9h 53min 24sec which is ~26.03% of the total event time after the restart.
  • Total time of observations (includes overlapped observations): 51h 30min 55sec after the restart
  • Total satnogs observations vetted as good: 297
  • Total satnogs observations with images decoded: 274 observations with 531 images decoded which is ~1.94 decoded images per observation
Observations - click here to see them all
7 Likes
#2

That’s an impressive set of observations!

3 Likes
#3

This is a collage from the best images we received:

collage
collage1926×1993 1.94 MB

And this is a collage of the best versions of the Australian themed images:

collage_extra
collage_extra1926×995 1.24 MB

To the station owners:
You can submit your station’s decoded images at https://ariss.pzk.org.pl/sstv/#award_rules_en .
Deadline is the end of the November 8th, 2018.
For date and time, look at the name of the images.

Congratulations to all and 73!!!

5 Likes
#4

Coverage plots of the event (for both SSTV transmitters in the db):

20181027_coverage
20181027_coverage3456×1944 1.05 MB
20181028_coverage
20181028_coverage3456×1944 1.14 MB

20181029_coverage
20181029_coverage3456×1944 1.08 MB

Legend:

  • green: good observation
  • red: bad observation
  • grey: failed observation
  • black marker: decoded image

The plots were generated with this Jupyer notebook (python): SSTV_2018October.ipynb

5 Likes
#5

Very nice! Also my station got 6-12 pretty well I am actually surprised.

1 Like
#6

I’m fairly sure the ‘Australian themed’ images (from VK4ZQ) were because the ISS radio was incorrectly set into cross-band repeater mode. VK4ZQ is > 1600km from my station, so I certainly wouldn’t have been hearing him direct!
I made an attempt to access the cross-band repeater on the following pass, but with no success, so I’m guessing the incorrect setting was fixed quickly!

2 Likes
#7

The map showing all participating stations listed above and the ground track during the observations:

image
image1033×662 264 KB

Map created using this jupyter notebook: SSTV_2018October.ipynb (updated)

8 Likes
#8

Thank you Fredy for the job and the time spend.
Very nice pictures and good surprise for me.

Didier

1 Like