New Satellite Mission

1

Dear forum,

I am interested to use SATNOGS for my teams satellite, for UHF beacon reception. I am having difficulty understanding how the GNU radio and Decoder should be used. Please share any input on that.

Thank you in advance,

Giannis

2 Likes
2

Hi Giannis,

Welcome to the community.

Please let us know what you already know about GNU radio and decoders and ask precise questions about what is giving you difficulties.

Daniel

3

Hi Daniel.

Thank you for your response. My knowledge on GNU radio and deocders are purely theoretical. I am investigating for the moment if a link is possible and once I have more clear view I will get back with specific questions. Another think I wanted to ask is if it is possible to transmit data through UHF to the satellite.

Thank you in advance,

Giannis

4

SatNOGS is for receiving only.
You may transmit, if you are permitted to, by yourself to the satellite.

5

What do you mean by myself? Not via satnogs?

6

From what i understand is that I do not have to set up the GNU radio and decoder if the modulation is already supported by SatNOGS. Also I can see the signal and decoded data only via SatNOGS webpage if i do not set up my own ground station. Correct me if i am wrong please.

7

→ SatNOGS is for receiving only.

As far as I know, setting up your own ground station is necessary only to be able to schedule observations on other’s ground stations.

The decoder has nothing to do with the modulation. You’ll need a decoder if you want to build a dashboard.

Just let us know more about your satellite’s communication system and your plan you are thinking of.

1 Like
8

Thank you very much, your input has been very helpful.
My plan is to use the UHF beacon as a backup to receive basic telemetry from the satellite.
If I register the satellite in SatNOGS, will the network’s ground stations automatically receive it so that I can view the data online?

Also, regarding data decoding:
If I want to interpret the telemetry fields, do I need to provide my own decoder definition, or is this handled automatically?

Thank you

9

Without your own registered ground station you will have to rely on others to schedule observations to see the data online. This will not be a big issue as long as the satellite is fresh in orbit.
However, over time, the amount of observations will decrease.

Yes, you do.

10

So the data will not be received automatically even for the beacon and in order to inspect them observation should be schedule. If is that the case I could schedule observations but this I will not have continues monitoring. Is there a way to succed continuous receptrion of the beacon without my own ground station?

11

Short answer no, long answer usually teams that offer mission updates and keep station owners engaged they get their satellites scheduled.

1 Like
12

Welcome Giannis!

A good starting place is the getting started page in the wiki: https://wiki.satnogs.org/Get_Started

Since you are a member of a satellite team, the Satellite Operator Guide is for you.

Please share the name of your satellite.

Sincerely,

Fabian

2 Likes
13

Isn’t it possible that I continuously schedule observations of my satellite? with continuously observations I mean from multiple of ground stations

14

In this wiki page it has the permissions matrix that shows who has permission to schedule or not on SatNOGS Network.

Scheduling of a satellite depends on the station owners, if they are interested to schedule a satellite or not in their stations or on other stations in the Network.

However there are some cases that we do more organized operations:

  1. New launch (LEOP phase), we gather information of the deployed satellites and we share Network stations time to track them as well as possible until we identify the satellite (match them, if possible, with published objects of the launch from space-track.org and assign them NORAD ID).
  2. Request by the team for urgent situations, for example satellite stopped or started transmitting unexpectedly, satellite behaves strangely etc.
  3. Specific events/transmissions from the satellite, for example ISS contacts with schools (ARISS Contacts), ISS SSTV transmissions, competitions running for radio amateurs etc.
  4. Sometimes we track also re-entries of satellites

Thus for continuously tracking a satellite, a satellite team has these two options:

  1. Engage station owners for scheduling and tracking the satellite, this usually happens by giving mission updates regularly or run competitions who is going to track better the satellite or demodulate more frames etc
  2. Build a station, join the Network and schedule observations by fairly sharing and using the Network.
2 Likes
15

@agathos Repeatedly asking for free mission support without even exposing your own satellite team affiliation I consider rude behavior.

Please reconsider your approach. I’ll leave this conversion.

Sincerely,

Fabian

4 Likes