Argentina impact site for Russian Mars probe
John Shalamskas (john@mlh.com)
Mon, 26 Apr 1999 01:52:20 +1000
That Russian Mars probe may have hit Argentina. I just found this news
article, dated April 22:
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9904/22/argentina.spaceprobe.reut/
I am new to this list, and have not done a whole lot of satellite
observation. While living in Hawaii, I talked to Mir and the Space
Shuttle on packet radio and 145 MHz FM voice. On at least 2 occasions
I have actually seen the satellite while tracking its 2 meter FM voice
signal with a hand-held 4 element Yagi antenna. Amazing! The signal
really does come from that little white dot that is moving across the
sky! Once I talked to Musa Manarov (on Mir) using only my 1.5 watt
handheld radio with a rubber duck antenna. He cut power to 5 watts and
we still had a good voice link. Sure did impress the astronomy club I
was with at the time!
I just moved to Mountain View, California, and haven't staked out a good
observing spot yet. Any help in this area would be appreciated. Also,
I don't know what tracking software is the best to use. My computer is
a P-2 233 overclocked to 291 MHz, with 128M RAM, so it ought to handle
just about any tracker that exists for the PC.
Thanks for the interesting list!
John Shalamskas, KJ9U
John Shalamskas Personal Computer Tech john@mlh.com