The QuakeSat Team is excited to have the help of HAM Amateur Radio and AMSAT community members to be involved in tracking, receiving, and fowarding data from QuakeSat. We would like to thank Rob Hardenberg from Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He emailed us saying that he picked up QuakeSat from The Netherlands with a very good signal. He was able to capture some beacon data and sent it to us.
           We're currently working on a more detailed key for decoding the beacon message, and we hope to have that available on this site very soon so that more of you can get involved. Here, is a sample beacon message: 
fm KD7OVB to QST ctl UI pid BB
QuakeSat Tue Jan  5 14:16:05 1988....]..5.5.*.. ?.=G*B.
.5.h...............T.............n.........[
R..........L..@x..@.
.@H..@.......@........l(.@.S...S.......&.@G.......(j.@...@H..@ta......H..@ ..
.@. .@H..@(j.@H..@........l(.@..w...w......&.@ )...9(.@...
fm KD7OVB to QST ctl UI pid BB
QuakeSat Tue Jan  5 14:16:15 1988....]..5.5.*...?>=
*J...=.k...............P.............m.........l
]..........L..@x..@.
.@H..@.......@........l(.@.S...S.......&.@G.......(j.@...@H..@ta......H..@..
.@. .@H..@(j.@H..@........l(.@..w...w......&.@ )...9(.@...

          The first portion of the beacon data is in ASCII, and rather comprehendible. The remaining message, however, is binary data which doesn't appear to be very useful, but does contain data on temperatures and voltages. Another oddity in the message is the date, which is set in 1998?! It turns out that we've been so busy in performing regular mission operations of uploading critical commands and downloading necessary files that we've haven't had a chance to update the on-board clock yet to the real date. Again, there will be a concise decode key posted on this website for this portion of the data very soon.
          If you are able to hear QuakeSat, no matter where you are, or if you too are able to receive a QuakeSat transmission. Let us know. We'd be happy to hear from you. You can send in contacts, your questions, and comments to: eric.d.tapio@lmco.com
          And if you do email us, please include as much of the following information as possible so that we can send you a QuakeSat QSL Card.

     Your Name
     Call Sign
     Mailing Address
     And tell us a little bit about your contact with QuakeSat!

  
      If you're interested in tracking us, QuakeSat is being tracked by NORAD and is labeled as object 27845. The orbital elements (as of July 5, 2003) are:

Number Epoch Incl  RAAN Ecc  AoP   MA RPD
27845 3185.17316710 98.7250 192.0436 .0008013 311.8441 48.2047 14.1951385


  
       But, if you would like to use the latest TLE that the Stanford Mercury Ground System is using to track QuakeSat, including the base frequency the station is trying to receive data on, then visit the Stanford Ground Station Webiste here .

  
       Here's the current schedule for orbit passes over Stanford University.

       
Send mail to eric.d.tapio@lmco.com with questions or comments about QuakeSat, or this website.
Copyright © 2004 QuakeSat
Last modified: 6/6/2004