Join us on Wednesday, June 2 at noon Pacific for the Satellite Comms Hack Chat with Paul Marsh!

All things considered, space isn’t that far away; you could drive the equivalent distance in an hour or two, with time for a couple of stops on the way. Of course, getting to space isn’t as simple as a Sunday drive, and yet despite the expense and trouble, we’ve still managed to fill our little corner of the solar system with an astonishing number of satellites.

Almost every single one of the spacecraft we’ve put in orbit represents a huge capital investment, both in terms of building something that can withstand the extreme environment up there and as far as the expense involved in getting it there. So once it gets there, it needs to start producing results, and for the most part that means sending some kind of messages back down to Earth. And those communications can be tempting indeed to hardware hackers.

Monitoring messages from on high is what the satcom radio hobby is all about. Learning how to do it properly can be tricky, though. What frequencies does one use? What are the modulation schemes? What kind of antennas would someone need? And what about tracking these birds as they whizz overhead?

To answer these questions and more, Paul Marsh from UHF-Satcom will stop by the Hack Chat. Paul has been interested in satellites since the early 1990s and coupled with his background in infosec and pentesting, he has uncovered a lot about the ins and outs of satellite snooping. Stop by the Hack Chat and learn how to sniff in on what’s going on upstairs.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, June 2 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.