I'm glad to see the astronauts safely home! I hope the world finds the focus and real reasons to continue manned space exploration for the benefit of all mankind. Onto the next tracking mission...

Oh my! The latest of the Chinese LEO weather satellites are capable of detecting ships at sea. One of the BC Ferries is in the middle of the Salish Sea and underway. See her specs below for reference. AIS plot from a few 10s of minutes after the pass also provided.

Almost sunset and FENGYUN-3G (the low flying weather sat) shows us the Cascade volcano shadows nicely. I miss NOAA 15 for these types of images as its aesthetic was the best.

The most profound thing I've heard from Artemis II thus far. "You're go to go" (audio on)

History made! 🚀 🇨🇦 Jeremy Hansen and the #ArtemisII crew have officially broken the distance record set by Apollo 13. They’re further from Earth than any human has ever been. Even cooler? Sunshine Coast’s own @coastal8049.bsky.social is helping NASA track the mission from his home-built system. 📡

Artemis II entered the Lunar Hill sphere.

#Artemis2 is a challenging object to collect Doppler from with a small sensor. Since Artemis I, I began research into a method of Doppler extraction that doesn't rely on a carrier, demodulation or FFT. I can report success! Nearly complete pass with heavy tree attenuation.🧵⬇️

This screenshot appears to reveal success in my new way of reducing Doppler without using a FFT from signals like Artemis II is using. My software is firmly locked on Artemis II and reducing Doppler all without demodulation or FFTs... All in a ultra-low SNR environment.

Today I lost a friend. Goodbye Jason Whyte, AKA VJ Honeybee.

I had a nice chat with @glendaluymes of the @vancouversun.bsky.social about my involvement with the NASA Artemis II mission. vancouversun.com/news/bc-amat...

First day Doppler analysis of Artemis II.

Artemis II is flying a very southern declination trajectory for most of the mission. Despite the extremely low elevation angles I received very useful data this morning. This was exactly the type of data I was hoping for to test new small dish cis-lunar tracking techniques.

So what’s going on here with respect to Artemis II? The mission is flying a northern hemisphere adverse trajectory. But as you can see from these early models it’s very dynamic. DSN activity schedule vs trajectory.

I’ve been helping the University of New Brunswick (UNB) team get ready for Artemis II. Brent Petersen and I both sit on the AMSAT-CA board and have a common vision to build a pan Canadian space monitoring culture. GO ARTEMIS II, GO UNB! globalnews.ca/news/1175516...

DRO-A/B observed orbital motion recording begins.

DRO-A/B remain co-located in a DRO. This after DRO-B apparently return to join its colleague after a wander 'there and back.'

Revised IMAP at Earth-Sun L1 point. Measured it's rotation rate by comparing my Doppler to JPL Horizons data and tested out a new feature I created for STRF that eliminates aliased measurements. IMAP is spinning at pretty much exactly the 15s period is should be. 🧵⬇️

Chang'e 6 remains active in its very distant HEO of the Earth. In fact it is passing by the Moon just outside the eclipsed area tonight. Imagine below at peak lunar eclipse at 11:34UTC.

Excellent piece from @astrokiwi.bsky.social @sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy & Laura Revell. This one sentence is the crux of it all 👇 "There is no public mandate for a single company in one country to make changes on that scale to the planet’s atmosphere." Highly recommended. 🔭🧪

There and Back Again INDEED! We seem to have caught DRO-B returning its twin DRO-A in DRO of the Moon after documenting a journey to the Lonely Mountain and back. Nice catch my Graham G8FXB!

DRO-B appears to have returned to DRO orbit of the Moon after it's wander to a 3:2 resonance touring EM L3-L5 orbit in Spring 2025. Then is took to a high Earth orbit in Fall 2025 and back this winter. Graham G8FXB picked it back up on a routine monitoring of KPLO the other day.

Tuning up for @NASAArtemis using JWST’s S-band emission. Its schedule is public. Its motion is in the Doppler. Overlay the two and they match. Spacecraft geometry, revealed in RF. 📡🛰️✨

In January @russianforces.org pointed out odd behaviour from the Russian ELS/TUNDRA satellite early warning system. The co-ordinated westward drift in apogee longitude appears to have ended in a co-ordinated manner. 🧵⬇️ bsky.app/profile/coas...

I finally observed IBEX the other day on S-Band. It appears to dump for an hour then turn off. It uses 320 and 160ksps. The latter at levels I could decode and confirm the spacecraft ID using @aang23.satdump.org's satdump once I tuned up a pipeline to do it. SCID = 0x02A7

CHANG'E 6 has given me the slip! After an extensive search yesterday, I wasn't able to find in anywhere close or far from it's expected trajectory or around the Moon. I suspect the last known orbit was a transfer orbit into some sort of Earth/Moon resonance orbit...

NASA enlists Canadians to help track Artemis 2 Moon mission spaceq.ca/nasa-enlists...

Jude and I go adventurous with the Seestar S50 and used the framing feature to do a deep dive into Markarian’s Chain.

NASA Selects Participants to Track Artemis II Mission. www.nasa.gov/technology/s...

Testing systems for #Artemis2 data collection by decoding KPLO in lunar orbit. I'll be using the Ettus B200 referenced with my Stanford Research PRS10 Rb standard which is disciplined with a Bodnar LPE-1420 for the Artemis Doppler gather mission. 🧵⬇️

Artemis II launch preparations are accelerating, with launch windows now being released. We’ll be monitoring the mission closely and sharing updates here as they become available.🧵⬇️ www.nasa.gov/mission/arte...

CHANG'E 6 slipped behind the Moon… and the radio signal didn’t behave the way the textbooks promised. 🤷‍♂️📡🌖🛰️ This thread shows how we confirmed a real lunar occultation without clear Fresnel fringes and why that still matters.🧵⬇️

Chang'e 6 is predicted based on the known state vector to be occulted by the Moon overnight. In a rare moment of luck the predicted occultation will be well placed for observation here! 🤷‍♂️📡🌖🛰️ 🧵⬇️

Unexpectedly clear day on the Sunshine Coast via NOAA 20.

A very late night ISS pass and was able to copy the new test pattern signal. A nice near overhead pass. The optimized 1.8m dish was overkill and it should work in much smaller setups.

Chang'e 6 circumpolar Doppler for the last 24 hours. I have many tall trees north of my antennas so the thermal noise and direct blocking occurred during parts of the day. Should be a good start to update the state vector.

Chang'e 6 is spending a lot of time in coherent lock with ground station(s). Modelling the presently known orbit it will encounter the Moon again on 2025-01-08 at about 12:00 UTC at a distance ~32000km well within the Lunar hill-sphere. 👀

Here’s a new visualization of the Russian TUNDRA/EKS early-warning satellites. Each frame shows apogee latitude/longitude over time (monthly steps), with drift patterns becoming obvious as the constellation evolves. Not a conclusion — a hypothesis to test. 🧵⬇️

Noticed something interesting in the Tundra/EKS constellation. Four birds — Cosmos-2541, 2546, 2552, 2563 — all begin drifting west around the same time. Instead of isolated failures, the behaviour looks coordinated at the constellation level. 🧵⬇️

Recovered NTS-3 today as it slowly drifts eastward at about 1° per day. Based on the EAGLE style bus so its emissions seem to come and go on a periodic basis. More info here: space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/nts...

After days of monitoring the Starlink V2 Mini DTC emissions on ~2010.5MHz, I deployed the 1.8m dish to track a number of the objects this morning. Here's STARLINK-11321 emitting broadband data (4.5MHz) centred on ~1992.5MHz. Every Starlink DTC object I tracked emitted similarly.

A full day of @SpaceX Starlink V2 mini DTC satellites emitting on ~2010.5MHz. The video shows the raw curves then the fit of 649 spacecraft IDs (green) with nominal operational altitudes for this bus class. 🧵⬇️

Unlike the Starshield emissions, Starlink S-band emissions appear to be weaker. But at times there are huge signals like this pass of Starlink 11079 [58708, 2024-002D]. The dark vertical lines indicate the signal was strong enough to overload my preamp front end. 🧵⬇️

Starlink (NOT Starshield) has taken up residence on ~2010.5MHz. Continuous emissions over me. @SpaceX is known to have purchased rights to this spectrum from Echostar. Anyone know if they are authorized to be emitting here yet or at all from space? Sense the plot thicken?

I'd like to thank Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica for his efforts to investigate and report on the Starshield emissions. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

HANDRAYAAN-3 was last reported by Space-Track.org on 2025-06-27. In September it became obvious from asteroid tracking data that the service module would encounter the Moon in early November twice. 🧵⬇️

CHANDRAYAAN-3 service module has been recovered. She's located about 7 degrees south east of the Moon this morning.

Thanks to the some hawk eyed followers, CHANDRAYAAN 3 service module appears to be engaged in cis-lunar navigation activities and is in a new orbit. isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan_...

DRO-B has been confirmed to be in a new orbit based on reception of X-band signals. The spacecraft remains at low declination but will rapidly rise northward over the next couple of days allowing more data to be obtained. 🧵⬇️

US military officials now require permission to discuss many topics with Congress including "Spectrum, which refers to the electromagnetic spectrum that underpins military operations and other key US government functions." www.cnn.com/2025/11/02/p...

Spooky Moon and natural cobwebs over the dish antennas... Happy Halloween all! 🎃