 I need a minute to set this up. My laptop is a bit weird, it doesn't have normal ports. And in the meantime, I can tell you a story, it's a bit of a sad story about my past here. So when my talk got accepted, I was really excited. And the problem is because of my accent, and because it's hard for me to announce it well sometimes, it's a challenge for me to pronounce the name of the conference. So I tried to tell all my friends, and everyone was like, what was that, Benbencon, Benoncon, Benbencon, that would be a great name for community moderators conference, I think. So eventually I just had to settle on a cool conference in New York City. And then people would be like, what's the name of the conference, and look behind you, a three-headed monkey. So yeah, anyway, looks like we're all done. I'm actually very excited to be here at this conference. I'm especially excited to talk about satellites because there is only a handful of man-made things that are cooler than satellites, and hopefully you'll agree with me by the end of this talk. So there is over 1,500 satellites orbiting Earth right now, way more if you count space garbage that doesn't do anything useful, but it's still there. Some of them we use daily, it's GPS, it's of course satellite TV, it's satellite imaging, mapping satellites, and those are all really massive, really expensive, they serve a specific commercial purpose. Next we're going to talk about a different kind, which is radio-amateur satellites. And signals from those can be received with just a ham radio, and we're going to learn how to do that. So radio-amateur satellites are mostly launched by universities or student teams or even small private organizations. Some of them actually carry out scientific experiments, which isn't exactly amateur, so the naming is a bit deceiving here. But still many others are meant specifically for radio communication and for ham radio enthusiasts to use. They are also incredibly tiny, there is a very common form factor called CubeSat, which is shown on the slide. And it's a cube that's just 10 centimeters on one side, and I've heard many people in the US don't really know what the centimeter is, so that's like under four inches, I guess. Just so you know. So let's take a look at some of the things you can actually find in orbit if you try hard enough. And we'll start with actually how do you communicate with ham. And there's two different pieces of hardware that you need to have. And the first one is of course radio, and what most people just use nowadays is software defined radio or SDR. And in its simplest and cheapest form, it's just a USB dongle that you plug into your laptop and it magically works. And all the configuration is done through software, which is why it's software defined radio, makes a lot of sense. The one on the picture is called the FunCube dongle, and we'll get back to it in a little bit. So the second is obviously an antenna, and those run from $50 to huge setups that you can easily spend your monthly salary on. And unfortunately, there is much cheaper option because an antenna is basically a bunch of properly aligned conductors, and in case with radiometer satellites, the conductors are basically metal rods. So you can build one at home if you want. And the one on the picture can be assembled from some stuff you might have in the attic. It's a piece of wood and a bunch of metal chunks. There is a similar project that I absolutely love. It's called $4 Hammer Radio Satellite Antenna. The title is very descriptive. It will run you down around $4, all you need is a long piece of wood and a bunch of wire hold hangers. And if you have all those things assembling it, it's just a matter of cutting the hangers to the right and lining them and attaching a cable. It's pretty simple to make. It's as affordable as it gets. You may end up with a lot of codes on the floor when you're done, but between hanging codes and receiving messages from space, I'll pick receiving messages from space and don't know about you. So if you follow links on the bottom of the slide, there is a couple instruction manuals. Once you have all that, you need to figure out when the satellite is actually going to be visible. It has to be over your horizon for you to actually receive the signal. And there is a lot of websites that allow you to track that. N2Y0 is probably the most famous one. You also need receiving and transmitting frequencies, which N2Y0 also has. It even has a schedule to show you when the satellite would be overhead, how long it will be on the horizon, how high it will get, the direction. So you just need to know where to point the antenna and you're done. And let's take a look at a few examples of what you can get from that. So we'll start with the International Space Station, obviously. And calling it a radio amateur satellite would be a bit of a stretch. But again, we're cheating a bit with the naming here because we're only going to talk about one specific part of the ISS, which is called ARIS. And ARIS is a project that's called Amateur Radio on the International Space Station. Just like the title says, it's again pretty descriptive. So the most amazing thing on board of ARIS is its own radio-based BBS bulletin board service. And almost nobody knows about it, but it exists and you can basically chat with other people through the International Space Station. You can send a public message, you can send a message to a specific user, you can even send an email through the International Space Station using the radio. And every once in a while, they transmit pictures through slow-scan television, SSTV, which is a popular image transfer method. And if you start with radio, you will probably know about it. And it's again pretty widely documented. And ARIS sends pictures like this to celebrate or commemorate special space-related events like the Cosmonautka's Day last April or the Sputnik launch anniversary, which is pictured on the slides here. As you can see, ISS could use full-time graphic designer on board. And you know, the quality isn't great, but I mean, it's a picture from space. Shouldn't really complain here. The most exciting thing is that sometimes if you're lucky, you can actually talk to the ISS crew members. Every once in a while, they just pop up and make unscheduled contacts with people on Earth through ARIS. Like during breaks or personal time, usually there is a website that outlines in detail crew members' schedule and the likelihood of them making contact at any given time. That's like scary. Thomas, I don't think we have any policies per se. We have a few little things on the walls, but mostly, most of the limitations come with space to bring things up. So that was a recording from a while ago. It's from 2010. And it's Shannon Walker on the picture. So she's basically just chatting with people answering random questions from the space station. This one, I think, was about things you can bring on board with you. So that's pretty great. Now let's move on to much smaller satellites. And this one is called FunCube, an MSAT UK satellite. And it's one of the very few satellites that actually has educational outreach as its main purpose. And it's a single unit CubeSat, again, 10 centimeters, four inches. And its big advantage is that since it's primarily an educational project, the transmissions are very easy to receive, very easy to decode, and everything about it is just extremely well documented because it's meant for high scores for students. And there is a dashboard that you can download and run. It requires minimal setup for the hardware. There is the FunCube dangle that they just sell. It's a great SDR built with FunCube in mind. It also supports a lot of other satellites, so it's pretty much universal. You plug the dangle, you fire up the dashboard, you point your antenna to where the satellite is supposed to be, you strike your best power poles, and you start receiving all kinds of data. So you have housekeeping data, telemetry, like sensor readings or bus voltage, just in case you want to know how the satellite is doing. There is also data from an onboard experiment they run that I'm not going to focus on, but also there is something called FITR, which means FunCube Twitter. And FITR is basically nine short messages that they can store in the satellite, and they are set by the operators. What's really cool about this is that you can shoot them an email, and they might actually send your message up there, which is just amazing if you're doing a school lecture and want like a nice demo and want people to actually catch a greeting to them. So that's really cool. The last one is a tiny satellite called Sprout, and it's a Japanese one launched by the Nihon University students. It transmits pictures just like the International Space Station, but it also has a stored voice recording that you can catch. We can even listen to it for a little bit. The quality isn't too great, though. This is the C1YDU, the best young, young, and old student. I am now a graduate student here at the Nihon University students. Yeah. But so the main reason I picked this one for the presentation is that it's actually the most adorable satellite in orbit. The full version of that recording starts with a song, for instance, and we just don't have enough time for that, but I would wait for you. And there is a microfilm inside that has 121 pictures on it. There was a public initiative to select those pictures so that kids and adults could just suggest a picture of it or a drawing to send to orbit, and of course it's not the only initiative like this, and it's not the only message we've sent into space by far. But it's definitely the cutest one because there is a drawing of ramen, there is a sleeping lady hugging a bunch of Japanese characters, I guess. There is even a drawing of Pikachu, as well as many others. This is, like, seriously my favorite thing just to look at them. I'm not sure what exactly is happening, but I love it. And there is a lot more pictures, and of course there is a lot more different satellites, but I guess it's time to wrap up because there is only so much you can show in 10 minutes. So at least now you know a bit more than you knew 10 minutes ago about satellites. Check. You've seen a cat picture. Check. A dog picture. Check. A Pikachu picture. Check. Among others. So mission accomplished. Right? And in case you feel like taking up a new hobby, I will upload the slides and I will post link on Twitter. There are many useful links on the bottom of the slides if you've noticed, so it should be more than enough to actually get you started with this. Have fun.