Orbital determination from Doppler shift is, IMHO, a far more interesting and fun STEM project than measuring an absolute frequency. And it does not require MASERs, it only requires low-grade amateur equipment.
Amateur "Crowdsourcing" of orbital data goes at least as far back to ARRL collecting Sputnik reception reports both by traffic nets and audio tape. Doppler shift for a VHF transmitter in low earth orbit is several 10's of kHz over a period of minutes and this pass-information is incredibly useful for orbit determination. And science and technology students have been participating in these determinations for decades too. A very nice review of the work done 25 years ago by students, was published in QST by N6XT: http://www.setileague.org/articles/ham/kepler.pdf Tim N3QE _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
