Undoubtedly... HAM's regularly communicate with nearer objects such as the ISS or the Shuttle. Even moon-bounce is doable at amateur levels.
11 billion miles away is a laaaaarge distance... "The sensitivity of our deep-space tracking antennas located around the world is truly amazing. The antennas must capture Voyager information from a signal so weak that the power striking the antenna is only 10 exponent -16 watts (1 part in 10 quadrillion). A modern-day electronic digital watch operates at a power level 20 billion times greater than this feeble level." http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/didyouknow.html -sc From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@smithcons.com] Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 12:34 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Space and Beyond: When I was a teenager and a ham radio operator we would have fun by tuning into Voyager and other transmissions. It was doable then even with hastily constructed directional antennas. If I remember correctly, the Voyager radio is about 25 watts. With good antennas, that is easily enough for EVM space, except during conjunctions. However, from 11 billion miles away, as SC says, that takes something with the sensitivity of the DSN. From: Steven M. Caesare [mailto:scaes...@caesare.com] Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 12:22 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Space and Beyond: The S/N ratio is such that you'd need access dishes the size/sensitivity of the Deep Space Network. So the real issue would be hacking the ground-stations to get access to the equipment... unless you have a global array of 30+ meter dishes lying around. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Network -sc From: Crawford, Scott [mailto:crawfo...@evangel.edu] Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 11:37 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Space and Beyond: Cool. Has me wondering if amateurs could tune in to the broadcasts from Voyager. Also, I'm not sure how much instruction it receives, but it seems like there could be some interesting hacking opportunities. How secure could 35 year old technology be? From: Andrew S. Baker [mailto:asbz...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 10:10 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Space and Beyond: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/20/science/la-sci-voyager-20130321 http://xkcd.com/1189/ Read them in any order :) Hope you enjoy... (Voyager has computers, in case you're wondering) ASB http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker <http://xeeme.com/AndrewBaker> Providing Virtual CIO Services (IT Operations & Information Security) for the SMB market... ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
