Site Engineering

Upcoming Activities

Future science meeting topic:
Feb. 27 "Exploring Pulsar Timing Residuals," Dan Layne

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At this time we are holding our monthly meetings as virtual meetings. Our engineering meetings are normally held on the second Monday of each month. Our science meetings are held on the fourth Monday of each month. Start time is now 6:30 PM (Mountain Time). Email notifications are sent to members prior to the meetings. If you would like information to participate, please contact us at information(at)dses.science.

Recent past meetings are presently archived on Floyd Glick's website, at the top section for DSES: http://www.bd-oculars.com/downloads/Equipment_Inventory.htm.

Work trips to the Haswell antenna site are generally scheduled for each third Saturday of the month, with weather alternates on Sunday. This third weekend was chosen because it comes between our engineering and science meetings. Having a regular date helps our members plan ahead, especially those who must travel long distances. During the Covid-19 pandemic, work and science trips may be coordinated for other times. NOTE: Please coordinate with us before you go to the Plishner site, information(at)dses.science.

News

Update: The Deep Space Exploration Society prepared to support the Japanese OMOTENASHI Cube Sat Moon lander. The Omotenashi probe was deployed by the Artemis 1 mission shortly after injecting into a trans-lunar trajectory. Unfortunately, the Omotenashi probe was unable to properly point its solar power cells to the sun. This in turn prevented the probe from receiving updated Earth commands, and therefore could not adjust its path for the landing mission. The original plan was for the Omotenashi probe to deploy a lunar lander once it reached the Moon. DSES was in position to support the mission by listening and recording the lander's signals on UHF with the DSES 60-foot dish antenna, as the lander reached the Moon. The Omotenashi probe has now passed the Moon and in a solar orbit.

Japan gives up on landing Moon probe in setback for its lunar program Kyodo News, November 22, 2022.

DSES Omotenashi CubeSat Mission and Transmission Acquisition - slide presentation by DSES.

OMOTENASHI & EQUULEUS: the tiny spacecraft onboard the world’s most powerful rocket – Cosmos

OMOTENASHI (in Japanese): mission movie

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DSES participated in the annual ARRL EME Earth-Moon-Earth Moon Bounce communications contest. We operated on the weekends of October 15 & 16 and November 12 & 13, 2022 (UTC time). We operated using our 60-foot dish antenna at the Plishner site in Kiowa County. This year we operated on the 23 cm band, and on the last day also on the 70cm band. We made about 70 contacts in total, on the Q65-60B digital mode and morse code CW. More details will be presented in the future.

DSES observes 23rd pulsar: B1556 -44 Glenn Davis and Dan Layne made observations on Tuesday November 1, 2022, and successfully detected the 23rd pulsar by DSES.

DSES Science Meeting Notes for October 24, 2022 by Bill Miller are posted.

Website Update Notes

Current experiments now in progress at the Plishner Radio Astronomy & Space Science Center site in Haswell:

60-foot dish antenna:

Current main work with the 60-foot antenna is to develop our ability to detect pulsars.

We are regularly using the 60 foot dish antenna for joint observing runs for SETI with Skip Crilly at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. These joint observations are discussed in several of Skip's presentation slides. Please see our presentations page.

Jupiter Radio Science Experiment "Radio Jove":
20.1 MHz monitoring of Jupiter and its moon Io, using a 2-element phased dipole antenna - currently down, pending repair of the receiver.

Experiments in Colorado Springs:

Development of hardware/software and techniques for detecting pulsars.

Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance Monitor (SID):
- 25 kHz VLF Solar flare monitoring