Questions tagged [telemetry]

Questions related to the stream of data, typically transmitted via radio, generated by spacecraft or space missions.

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Turbo code used in New Horizons - encoding coefficient?

I know that New Horizons uses turbo code with r=1/6 for space communication1, however I don’t know which is the encoding coefficient, because I din’t think it could be 6, it seems it high. Could you ...
Spaceman's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
219 views

What is wrong with Voyager 1 attitude data telemetry? Is there a test version of the computer available?

There is a problem with Voyager attitude data telemetry. While the spacecraft continues to return science data and otherwise operate as normal, the mission team is searching for the source of a ...
Uwe's user avatar
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12 votes
1 answer
471 views

What did "verb 50 - noun 90" mean during Apollo 11 powered descent? (1202 alarm)

During powered descent a 1202 alarm occurred when LM Pilot Buzz Aldrin asked the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) for the difference between computed and measured altitude above ground by typing V16N68 (...
jumpjack's user avatar
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3 votes
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How to "decode" this ancient log of Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC)?

I found this interesting document: https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Documents/apollo_11_computer_words.pdf But the scan quality is very very poor! I tried interpreting the headers, but some characters ...
jumpjack's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
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Would GRAIL be possible on more distant airless bodies such as Mercury and Callisto?

I was thinking for quite a while about sending this question to Maria Zuber's e-mail address (she was the principal investigator of the GRAIL mission to map the Moon's gravity field), but then I ...
we'll see's user avatar
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12 votes
2 answers
577 views

Can ESA control the two Voyager spacecraft?

This is such a dumb question. There are many space organizations. Let's take ESA for this case. Given the two Voyager spacecraft are transmitting a weak radio signal to the Earth, can ESA command and ...
Auberron's user avatar
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1 vote
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Calculating body frame X vector's look direction in GEO (NED) frame from roll, pitch and yaw data, is this correct?

I have roll, pitch and yaw angle values for a LEO satellite. Satellite orbit frame and spacecraft body frame are defined as LVLH. The satellite position and velocity are given in ECI/GEI frame. I have ...
Ceren's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
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Telemetry: How do we manage to get a message to a tiny satellite that may be millions of kilometers away?

I saw a series of half hour documentaries on various satellites that had been sent out to explore various aspects of our solar system and found myself wondering how we aim our telemetry signals to hit ...
Henry's user avatar
  • 311
2 votes
1 answer
59 views

spacecraft thermal dataset

For a high-school academic project, I would like to plot a graph of change in satellite's temperature over time. Thus, (I think), I'm looking for real-time temperature data of sort of any (preferably ...
Filip Kocián's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
150 views

Can satellite internet be used for monitoring rocket telemetries during testing phase?

Latest prototype of Starship is fitted with Starlink satellite receiver. The SN11 prototype was destroyed during landing and the last seconds telemeteries before the explosion could not be monitored. ...
seccpur's user avatar
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5 votes
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What became of Vista-III decision theoretic telemetry display system from the 1990s?

I'm reading a paper [1], dated 1995, which describes a telemetry display system named Vista-III which was in development at the time. "We will be validating the new functionalities and expect the ...
Robert Dodier's user avatar
27 votes
3 answers
6k views

Why won't NASA show any computer screens?

This question was inspired by yesterday's NASA video stream of Perseverance landing on Mars (congratulations). I like watching rocket launches, they are really awe-inspiring, even if it's just a SN9 ...
Edheldil's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
449 views

How did Argentina, Namibia, and Pakistan help China monitor and communicate with Chang'e 5?

At the end of The Hill's article Chinese official unveils future moon mission plans including possible lunar base it says: The most recent Chang'e 5 probe was assisted by the European Space Agency, ...
uhoh's user avatar
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How did 20 radio observatories track balloons of the 1985 Venus-Halley (VeGa) mission in Venus' superrotating winds at an altitude of about 54 km?

Links in Phys.org's recent The detection of phosphine in Venus' clouds is a big deal, and here's how we can find out if it really is life lead to: Aerial Platforms for the Scientific Exploration of ...
uhoh's user avatar
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4 votes
0 answers
225 views

Do SpaceX and other US-based launch companies get "ITAR waivers" for live-broadcasting processed telemetry data?

The 17-Feb-2016 answer to Is the Falcon 9 launch/landing telemetry data available for visualisation purposes? explains that access to telemetry data is controlled by ITAR and/or other regulations, but ...
uhoh's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
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Why did Sputnik-1 transmit on both 20 and 40 MHz?

Wikipedia's Sputnik 1 and this answer to Why did Sputnik 1 have four antennas? say that Sputnik transmitted at both 20 and 40 MHz. Why two different frequencies? Why so far apart? It's worth noting ...
uhoh's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
2k views

What did Sputnik-1 sound like? Did it use multiple tones?

Radio transmissions from Sputnik-1 could be heard on short wave radios around the world. Questions: A carrier signal only would not be particularly audible to an AM radio listener, was it modulated ...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 148k
4 votes
2 answers
532 views

What was the first use of analog to digital conversion in a satellite?

This answer to Do the Voyager probes transmit analogue or digital data? states that the Voyagers sent only digital data. This is no doubt mostly because analog data was digitized and store digitally ...
uhoh's user avatar
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5 votes
2 answers
641 views

Besides the (currently down) HDEV, are there other public live video feeds from the ISS?

I am working on spacecraft simulation software, and I would like to validate my ISS simulation that uses ISS-Mimic's code to connect to live ISS telemetry. I already have some early validation done ...
CourageousPotato's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
716 views

Why doesn't the SpaceX web-cast show the telemetry, (altitude and speed) for the first stage during recoveries?

On the YouTube videos of SpaceX launch operations, they show altitude and velocity for the 2nd stage throughout the flight, but after stage separation I have never seen telemetry displayed for the ...
Mike H's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
485 views

Is there an archive/database of ISS telemetry over time?

I'm trying to find a database of the ISS's telemetry (specifically, its pitch and yaw) over time. All I've found so far is live streaming, like http://www.telemetry.space/, which gives the realtime ...
AstroBen's user avatar
  • 141
1 vote
2 answers
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Operator access to a cube satellite or any educational satellite

I would like to have free or low-cost access to an existing CubeSat (educational satellite) for educational purposes. I wish to familiarise myself with the end to end command & control activities, ...
rsf's user avatar
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23 votes
4 answers
6k views

Was the Soviet N1 really capable of sending 9.6 GB/s of telemetry?

On the Wikipedia page for Soviet N1, it says of the control system: The telemetry system relayed data back at an estimated rate of 9.6 gigabytes per second on 320,000 channels on 14 frequencies. ...
nexus_2006's user avatar
22 votes
1 answer
5k views

What exactly turned on the light indicating Apollo 8 was starting to fall towards the Moon?

@PearsonArtPhoto's answer links to the page Apollo 8, 21 – 28 December 1968 by Hamish Lindsay at honeysucklecreek.net from where I have quoted below. Question: What exactly turned on the light ...
uhoh's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
592 views

Satellite Telemetry on the Internet

Are there any web sites that show real time telemetry such as temps, bus voltages etc? Looking for one to follow.
S. Erickson's user avatar
10 votes
2 answers
866 views

What does a NASA employee see on their monitor when a robot lands on Mars?

I have seen that many NASA employees (see the picture) were present in the control room when InSight landed on Mars on November 26, 2018. What I did not see is what exactly those people saw on their ...
umbeke's user avatar
  • 101
2 votes
2 answers
210 views

How to calculate velocity components of a point on Mars surface w.r.t. Mars center?

I found altitude, speed and acceleration data of old mission Phoenix during EDL phase, but they are referred to Mars c.o.g. rather than to ground or to landing site: Position and velocity (...
jumpjack's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
186 views

How can I know if NASA Horizons output is measured, calculated, estimated or what-else?

This link allows downloading from NASA Horizons server data about the distance of a body (OSIRIS-REX spacecraft ) from the Sun (see link here): How can I know how the distance is obtained? Is it ...
jumpjack's user avatar
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2 votes
4 answers
245 views

Tracking OSIRIS-REX

Where could I get real time telemetries for OSIRIS-REX? On official site I can only find "graphical simulated future telemetries", which are not very useful, also because each AAM is stated ...
jumpjack's user avatar
  • 3,023
1 vote
1 answer
437 views

How does this antenna work, with both a feed horn and hyperbolic secondary in front of the dish?

Scrolling through the Roscosmos twitter feed I saw this image of a dish antenna in a recent tweet. Google translate shows that the post says: Новый измерительный пункт будет построен на Сахалине для ...
uhoh's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
241 views

How will Icarus aboard the ISS track bird migration?

The question Is it possible to see animals from space? has several answers, and they are all based on optical imaging. In this answer I describe and show images from the First count of individual ...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 148k
2 votes
1 answer
993 views

Is there really a radio on Elon Musk's solar-orbiting Tesla Roadster? Can we communicate with it? [closed]

Various media have reported that there is a radio on Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, now in orbit around the Sun, and that this radio is playing music (for example: BBC reporting that David Bowie's ...
gerrit's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
499 views

What data is coming back from Space-X's Starman and his ride? [duplicate]

Other than the video, is any other telemetry or sensory data being beamed back to Earth for science?
HorusKol's user avatar
  • 535
1 vote
0 answers
102 views

Calibration of Antennae in satellite and in ground station [closed]

How to orient the ground station antenna and that of the satellite just after the launch?
Nithin rahav's user avatar
21 votes
2 answers
3k views

Does SpaceX use any of Falcon-9's camera data for engineering or status information, or are they "just for PR"?

I've previously asked Roughly how many self-viewing cameras are present in a Falcon 9 LEO mission? asking if it's closer to a dozen or a hundred on a log scale, because I have a hunch there's probably ...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 148k
3 votes
3 answers
825 views

Distinction between spacecraft data and telemetry - difference in spacecraft resource use?

What is the distinction (if any) between spacecraft data and spacecraft telemetry? Do these terms tend to represent different kinds of information? While each case is different, in what ways do they ...
user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
219 views

Were the previous Mars landers configured to transmit beacons or data during descent?

The ExoMars Entry, Descent and Landing Demonstrator Module (EDM) Schiaparelli was configured to broadcast a UHF beacon throughout the entry, descent and landing phases using multiple transmitters and ...
uhoh's user avatar
  • 148k
-3 votes
1 answer
122 views

Voyager's distance from Earth

If it took Voyager’s radio signal 4 hours to cross the solar system and reach Earth, roughly how far away in AU was Voyager from Earth when it sent that signal?
Nia_1's user avatar
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4 votes
2 answers
750 views

SpaceX second stage altitude decrease?

I was watching SpaceX's launch of the Japanese satellite JCSAT-16 yesterday, and the second stage at a point seemed to decrease in altitude (from 171km to 165km) at about T+00:07:00 in this video. Is ...
user2277550's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
336 views

How is engine thrust monitored during flight?

The failure of the Falcon 9 first stage landing during the Eutelsat/ABS mission was attributed to: thrust was low on 1 of 3 landing engines which indicate that engine thrusts are part of the ...
hshib's user avatar
  • 609
3 votes
1 answer
303 views

Will Red Dragon experience a "Communications Blackout" during SRP?

In the recently proposed entry of Red Dragon into the Mars atmosphere, the supersonic retro-propulsion (or SRP, roughly: slowing down using thrusters while still moving against the atmosphere at ...
uhoh's user avatar
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