ARLA/CLUSTER: 4M Lunar flyby amateur radio: Está para breve os radioamadores comunicarem com satelite Luar, pelo menos durante 100 horas

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

4M lunar ham radio payload shipped

Ghislain Ruy LX2RG reports the 4M Lunar flyby amateur radio payload
was shipped on Thursday, October 2 and he departs for the Xichang
Satellite Launch Center on Sunday, October 5.

He says the lifetime of 4M is quite an unknown: it may be as short as
100 hours (so at least to the Moon) and could extend for some weeks if
the attitude is favorable.

It is now known that the spacecraft will not re-enter the Earth
atmosphere after the flyby but instead enter a wonderful orbit. You
will find information animations and some JT65B test files at
https://cloud.luxspace.lu/public.php?service=files&
t=33c4a21c09ba3736a55fc09896e463f6

The launch will be transmitted by CNTV/CCTV: http://www.cntv.cn/ or
http://english.cntv.cn/ or http://english.cntv.cn/live/p2p/index.shtml

LX2RG says the team are setting up their ground station, and are
especially looking for southern hemisphere stations: ZS, VK and ZL,
Southern America continent mainly, as they will be placed first hand
for the early hours.

Launched is planned in a narrow window at 17:59:xx UTC on October 23
and flyby is to occur nominally on October 28 at 00:33 UTC.

4M is planned to start transmissions at 19:17 UTC, possibly with 10
minutes additional delay.

K1JT has developed a special version of WSJT. In addition of all the
features of the standard version, it includes also the display and
logging of the dT to three decimal places and the logging of the
manual offset that can be entered in JT65B modes. This version should
be used by all who wants to participate to the ‘Multilateration’
experiment.

The participant to this experiment should also make sure that the
clock of their PC stays synchronized to the UTC time. Desired accuracy
should be within 1ms and within 10ms at the very least. Use of NTP
synchronizing software is a must.

The special version can be downloaded from
http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/WSJT_10.0r4336a.exe

The LuxSpace ground station comprises 2 x 8 element crossed Yagis from
Joachims antenna (with an improved design to lower the back lobe), a
SSB.de LNA and Yaesu antenna rotators.

Best regards.

Ghislain Ruy LX2RG
Email ruy  luxspace.lu with “4M Amateur” in the subject

Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M)
http://moon.luxspace.lu/

4M-LXS Lunar amateur radio payload
http://amsat-uk.org/2014/09/01/4m-lunar-payload/