SUPSI SpaceLab as the name inspires, is a space laboratory created for students with a goal of implementing, testing, launching and monitoring small satellites (cubesat).

As you may noticed on the website the launch date is approaching, so we are testing the Groundstation (GS), in order to prepare ourself to listen our own satellite transmitting from the edge of space ;)

So far, the best practice to get aquainted is trying to listen someone else satellite...
Today we have tracked (thanks to Ivano!) one of the famous series of meteo satellites "Noaa", the target choosen is the "Noaa-15". In order to download the images from this kind of satellites we need WXtoImg

Other tool we used:
- Orbitron 
- A self-build interface (with a PIC) to connect Orbitron to Yaesu antenna controller
- A Kenwood Radio (for the 144MHz band)
- A computer :-)

Here a couple of images of the various steps:

 Starting antenna tracking on satellite coordination

WXtoImg in action

Parking the antenna once finished




A couple of the resulting meteo images: (real color, infrared)

Border aren't well alligned, probably because of signal level (volume).





















Some GS shoots: