Thursday 12 April 2012

Saw and Heard the ISS on Yuri's Night

Today is Cosmonautics Day in Russia, a holiday that celebrates the first manned space flight made on April 12, 1961 by the 27-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin circled the Earth for 1 hour and 48 minutes aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. Coincidentally, it is also the anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch that occurred 20 years after the historic Vostok flight.

Tonight on what is known as Yuri's Night cosmonauts on board the International Space Station made contact with St Petersburg in Russia.

The pass of the ISS over the UK starting aat 20:28 UTC was extremely bright and visible despite the cloudy sky and as it passed into Eastern Europe the contact began on 145.800MHz. I managed to capture some very scratchy audio with my FUNCube Dongle and the loft antenna. 

  ISS St. Petersburg contact 12-04-2012 by nerdsville

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