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Comment by executesorder66 | Hacker News Reader

> The goal of this project is to make a collection of GNUradio decoders for the telemetry of different satellites. The decoders support submitting telemetry in real time to the PE0SAT telemetry server. Another goal is that the decoders are as easy to use as possible, to try to make more people interested in receiving digital telemetry from satellites and collaborating in online telemetry submission.

I don't know much about satellites. Is this data not collected by whoever owns the satellites? How does it help if volunteers collect this data?

This looks like a really cool project though, and I'd like to contribute once I've learned some more about it.

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One of the major challenges in managing satellites into space is the long term commitment: getting it up there is a one time cost, it can be high, for sure, but it can be managed, and is getting cheaper.

The real challenge is having base stations to collect the precious signals you want to receive in the first place. To get continuous input, you need stations all over the planet, something only empire-level states can usually accomplish. Now imagine you have a satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit that needs to be also sent instructions about how to reposition itself, and you have a real challenge on your hands.

The idea is that we can leverage free software, hacker and ham communities to collect data. It is a distributed and decentralised community that is highly skilled and can perform such data collection fairly well, given the proper tools and equipment. It's not yet sending data to satellite, as far as I know, but it's a nice first step.

As for property of data, I guess those are public projects, and therefore it is public data... As an example, all NASA output is public domain, by principle.

So, if I launch an open communications satellite (or ring of satellites) to relay messages for other satellites to my ground station, I could enable a whole new industry? Food for thought.

Not a new one, no. NASA has been doing this for decades.

But does NASA sell the service? I could, with a ring of micro-sats.

They do, and they are gearing up to handle more customers.

http://esc.gsfc.nasa.gov/space-communications/sgss.html

One example of this class of network is the NASA TDRS network (http://tdrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_and_data_relay_satell...) that they use for everything from relaying data from the science stations in Antarctica to supporting old shuttle launches. They launch a updated satellite every now and then. It's a pretty cool network if you ask me :)

> The real challenge is having base stations to collect the precious signals you want to receive in the first place. To get continuous input, you need stations all over the planet, something only empire-level states can usually accomplish. Now imagine you have a satellite that is in geosynchronous orbit that needs to be also sent instructions about how to reposition itself, and you have a real challenge on your hands.

If it's in geosynchronous orbit then you only need one base station, no?

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