Hi everyone!
I got another update on REAL for you all.
REAL is now approaching nine months on-orbit and its operations have exceeded our expectations. The spacecraft has collected gigabytes of data and our science team is beyond giddy. They are very much in the data analysis phase, so I don’t think we have any discoveries to announce at the moment. Least to say REAL has met its full mission goals! We are proud of our team’s efforts over the long years it took to get our favorite satellite into space.
Once again we extend our appreciation to the SatNOGS and LibreSpace communities. We have noticed some uptick in community members monitoring REAL, including from a member in backyard, so to speak.
One final note I have regards our ground station. For most of the mission we have only been able to command REAL when our ground station transmits at 400W+. That is a huge disparity compared to REAL’s transmit power of 1W. Our power amplifier gave out last month. While we have replaced it, our uplink is still degraded, limiting the window we have to command REAL. I will start a separate thread asking for help from the community on refining our GNURadio flowgraph.
K7MSU