Satellite Monitoring in a Turbulent World?

Arimathea asks: "I've spent the past week searching for information on the Web on how to do utility monitoring of satellites - i'm primarily interested in viewing unedited feeds from major news networks, but I'd also be quite curious to learn about monitoring of government, military, and NASA satellites for voice, data, and video. This information is scattered all over the place. Can anyone provide an introduction on this, pointers to good books, web sites, or equipment providers?"

Uh oh..

[OutRigged]

I've got a feeling that if anyone posts the information this guy's askin' for, Slashdot will be shut down for aiding Terrorists, and CmdrTaco and crew will sit in a cell down in Cuba awaiting to be formerly charged with anything. God bless America.

Re:Uh oh..

[stubear]

Really? You think so? Where's that list of satellites and coordinate tracking data? Ok, got it, now where are those encryption hack proggies I got last week? Got....errrr....cdmdrtaco, hi. No, I love your site. It's chock full of insightful, well intentioned comments. I would NEVER try to have you guys shut down. What, this comment? Errr...I don't know where that came from. My keyboard must have typed it on its own. Here, take it.

Encrypted?

[Samus]

Aren't most of these broadcasts encrypted now? Not only would it make it harder to eavesdrop but also illegal. Granted if you just sit around listening to this stuff you probably wont get caught but if you do what would happen? I don't imagine that whatever would happen would be all that pleasant or in accordance with your civil rights.

NASA TV

[north.coaster]

For live NASA feeds, check out NASA TV [nasa.gov]. I watch it every morning while I'm working out. It's mostly stuff for kids at that early hour, but they also broadcast rocket launches, space station dockings, etc.

Shortwave Radio Hobbiests

[Frightened_Turtle]

Shortwave Radio Hobbiests do this all the time. In fact, I believe there is a satellite that is open for use by the shortwave enthusiasts, put into orbit via donations and some private capital.

Samus is correct, most commercial and military communications will be encrypted. I would also add that there are enough stories to show that trying to decrypt this stuff without showing some discretion has gotten some people into hot water with the government.

A decent program for monitoring satellites is Starry

Corrections

[Andy Dodd]

It's amateur radio (ham) operators that do this.

While "shortwave" includes the ham bands, "shortwave hobbiests" are unlicensed listeners and most of the time focus on the shortwave broadcasters. Hams are licensed to transmit on a number of allocated bands, at power levels up to 1.5 kilowatts with no ERP limits in most cases. (i.e. you can have as much antenna gain as you want.)

Amateur operation isn't limited to HF. (The world below 30 MHz) Hams operate on VHF, UHF, and even microwave. (10 GHz and 24 GHz are popular thanks to the abundance of surplus Gunn diode sources at those bands - Supermarket motion detectors can be retuned to the amateur bands and made into a transmitter.)

There are quite a few amateur-operated satellites. http://www.amsat.org/ is a great resource for these units. (Almost all are registered with AMSAT.) "shortwave" has nothing do do with these sats, almost NONE of them operate in the HF bands. (A small handful have downlinks on 28 MHz, none have HF uplinks because the ionosphere woudl block the signal.) The most common bands used by ham sats are 2 meters (144-148 MHz) and 70 centimeters (440 MHz), although they go up to the microwave region. AO-40 (aka Phase IIID) was slated to run on 6-7 different bands, including a band adjacent to the 2.4 GHz ISM band. Unfortunately only 2-3 transponders are operational - During assembly, someone screwed up and connected the fuel lines to the orbit adjustment engine wrong and it exploded when they tried to execute their first engine burn. It's amazing how much of that sat they've been able to get operational despite the explosion.

Government and communications sats? I don't think so. These are all going to be encrypted. The exception are some scientific satellites, which have data downlinks in the clear. (Best example of this are the NOAA orbiters - Yes, you can receive weather satellite data at home, both from polar orbiters and the geostationary NOAA sats. I believe the non-weather earth-imaging Landsats use the same modulation scheme as the NOAA orbiters.)

Re:Corrections

[Frightened_Turtle]

Thanks, Andy!

Not being a ham myself, I couldn't have come up with all the proper details. You delivered much better information than I could have dug up. :)

Sure!

[Rudy Rodarte]

I can get you that info! Just reply to this post with your Name, address, home/work/cell phone number and the times its convenient for us to kick down your door.
Thanks in Advance,

Jack Bauer, CTU

Several Sources

[Isao]

The LyngSat website [lyngsat.com], excellent info on geostationary communications satellites.

Usenet newsgroups: alt.video.satellite.mpeg-dvb, rec.video.satellite.tvro

Google keywords: satellite wild feeds [google.com]

Note that these sources are useful no matter where in the world you are; they're not U.S. specific.

Have fun.

The Internet

[jo42]

cnn.com

No you didnt...

[Majestix]

...OOOOHHHH!!!! You are just asking for a visit from the Dept of Homeland Security!!!!

-M-

long live the new flesh!

[agentk]

Great, weird movie directed by David Cronenberg. This guy runs a little TV station. He tunes in to some unauthorized satellite feeds, and encounters the terrible Videodrome [imdb.com] !

Not everything is encrypted/secret

[shoppa]

Lots of the feeds you'd be interested in are encrypted and/or protected via "security through obscurity", but one isn't:

NASA TV [http]

For those with satellite dishes, NTV is available through AMC2 (formerly referred to as GE2), Transponder 9C at 85 degrees West longitude, vertical polarization, with a frequency of 3880 Mhz, and audio of 6.8 Mhz. This is a full transponder service and is operational 24 hours a day. Mission audio is also available during crew working hours -- 1:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Central Ti

Not many...

[Controlio]

Hmmm... 2003-03-24 04:29:41 Finding war backhaul feeds on the Big Dish? (askslashdot,media) (rejected)

I have an analog BUD that can hit both horizons. The problem I've found, is that not a lot of signals are being broadcast Clear To Air anymore. Except for breaking news or sporting events being broadcast to a host of affiliates, almost everything is getting encrypted.

And unfortunately, a lot of the CTA signals that are still around are moving to digital. Unfortunately I can't justify the cost of upgra

Good Start

[BlueSkyResearch]

Try http://www.satobs.org It's a good starting point.