down to earth

LRPT image received from METEOR-M No.2-3 using a handheld antenna.

This was my first attempt at receiving weather satellite image transmissions with a software-defined radio.

Thanks to Dennis for hosting the workshop and hand-building these surprisingly functional Y-shaped antennas. This time we synced with METEOR-M No.2-3, a recent Russian weather satellite. It continuously circles the Earth in low orbit and periodically passes overhead, making it one of the few non-encrypted weather satellites hobbyists can still receive signals from.

The main tools were SatDump and an RTL-SDR connected to the antenna.

The image shows southeastern China, where I was when I received the signal. The QR-code-like glitches scattered across the frame are areas where signal packets were lost or corrupted in transmission - the satellite's broadcast briefly arriving incomplete.

There's something specific about pulling an image of your own city out of radio noise. The signal traveled from a satellite in low orbit, refracted through atmospheric interference, decoded by open-source software, and arrived as this. A slightly broken postcard from above.