Be the first to catch a signal from ESEO
It is time to prepare to listen to space. To celebrate the launch of the European Student Earth Orbiter (ESEO), ESA’s Education Office challenges the amateur radio community to listen out to be first to hear the new spacecraft orbiting Earth.
ESEO will be launched today, 3 December 2018, from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, as part of the Spaceflight’s SSO-A rideshare launch; spacecraft separation and activation is scheduled at about 2 hours 13 minutes after launch.
About two minutes after being deployed into its final orbit, ESEO will begin transmitting with its beacon signals to Earth that can be picked up by anyone with common amateur radio equipment. ESA challenges anyone to send to eseo@esa.int the recording of the signal of the 437.00 MHz signal received from ESEO during its pass in visibility of their ground station.
SIX SHIRTS, FROM ESEO TO THE WORLD!
For one week after the ESEO launch, the first email coming from each continent (America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Antartica), sent by radio-amateurs who recorded the signals received from ESEO, for which the signal recorded is confirmed to belong to ESEO, will be awarded an official ESA Education shirt of the ESEO mission.
More information about ESEO can be found here.
ESEO was launched on 3 December 2018, 19:34 CET.
You can find the TLEs here.
ESEO UHF Beacon Information:
Frequency: 437.00 MHz
Transmission Format: See attachment 1
Modulation Format: GFSK
Beacon schedule:
- Every 1 minute when in safe mode and just after deployment during the de-tumbling phase
- Every 1 minutes when in sunlight
- Every 5 minutes when in eclipse
Beacon Types (transmitted cyclically):
- General
- Power System
- OBDH
- AOCS and sensor/actuator
- FDIR and TMTC
- Payload
Additional beacon (not in nominal rotation): Emergency
Telemetry equations: See attachment 2
Destination Address is: ESEO
Source Address is: IW4DUL
The following information is stored in every packet sent from the spacecraft in the Address part of the message, as per AX.25 protocol.
| First Byte | |
| Destination Address Subfield | Source Address Subfield |
| A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 | A8 A9 A10 A11 A12 A13 A14 |
| Byte | ASCII | Bin Data MSB LSB |
Hex Data |
| A1 | E | 10001010 | 8A |
| A2 | S | 10100110 | A6 |
| A3 | E | 10001010 | 8A |
| A4 | O | 10011110 | 9E |
| A5 | Space | 01000000 | 40 |
| A6 | Space | 01000000 | 40 |
| A7 | SSID | 01100000 | 60 |
| A8 | I | 10010010 | 92 |
| A9 | W | 10101110 | AE |
| A10 | 4 | 01101000 | 68 |
| A11 | D | 10001000 | 88 |
| A12 | U | 10101010 | AA |
| A13 | L | 10011000 | 98 |
| A14 | SSID | 01100001 | 61 |
What your email should contain:
- An IQ recording in a recognised format
- Your Name
- Your Callsign (if any!)
- Snailmail address for delivery of your polo shirt
- Reception time of the beacon
- Details of any telemetry decoded
- Your Location
- A few lines about your equipment
*Attachements will be uploaded latest on Monday, 19th November 2018.