In our ongoing research related to a new work, we have been building a system to intercept signals from the LES-1 satellite. September has brought much better weather for this work, after a rainy August.
We’ve had a couple of very exciting moments, in just the last week or so, of suddenly finding the signal of the satellite. Below are a couple of excerpts from the signal of the LES-1, derived from I/Q data, which we’ve uploaded to SoundCloud.
Next steps will be to try to figure out if we can get a clearer signal with another type of antenna, and to start thinking about how parts of this process can be programmed, automated, or generally reliably repeated. The signal has quite a clear Doppler shift, which makes tight tuning difficult, as the signal drifts over time. Plenty to think about here.
One nice point to note is that the tumbling effect we were hoping to hear — the variation in the signal caused by the satellite rotating on its own axis every few seconds — is clearly audible in the excerpts.
Another thought: there is an almost magical feeling to the moment of hearing a signal from a half-a-century-old satellite, as it calls out from thousands of miles away.
