Arecibo Joins us for Moon Bounce 2010
Although World Moon Bounce Day 2010 is scheduled for April 17th, this year we will have contacts running for three days as we have the famous Arecibo dish joining us. April 17th is the day that the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission returned to earth 40 years ago and we set the date of World Moon Bounce Day 2010 to align with the Apollo 13 anniversary.
This year, April 16,17,18, Echoes of Apollo, a fun, educational, science outreach activity, will conduct 2 way Voice communications by bouncing radio signals off the Moon. One day of the event, Saturday, the 17th, has been assigned the Moniker, “World Moon Bounce Day”. Commonly known among the specialist amateur radio operators (hams) that do this, as EME, for Earth-Moon- Earth, this time, the Echoes of Apollo Moon Bounce event is quite special, and opens a big door of opportunity for Science outreach.
Ham Radio volunteers are travelling to Arecibo, home of the world’s largest single dish radio telescope (305m / 1,000ft in diameter), to set up a ham radio moon bounce station at the site. It will operate for 3 days, exchanging voice communications to many other amateur radio Moon Bounce stations worldwide. The Arecibo 1000 foot dish provides such a powerful, focused beam to the moon, that it allows monitoring of the Moon-Bounced signals on Earth, from schools, or homes, with very modest equipment.
The Echoes of Apollo event teams will be conducting tests of their moon bounce transmissions prior to the event, to determine the required receiving equipment for the public to use to hear the moon bounce-d signals. Check back with http://www.echoesofapollo.com often to see the huge variety of world Space News, and to see the results of the Moon Bounce tests.
So far we have moon bounce-capable stations in the US, Europe, and, of course Arecibo in Puerto Rico. (Look up on Google Earth, latitude 18.33 degrees north, and Longitude 66.75 degrees West, or click here to see the Arecibo Dish (pictured right)
Some other stations in Europe planning on participating, are:
Dwingeloo dish run by the CAMRAS group in Holland, http://www.camras.nl
Click here to see the Dwingloo dish.
HB9MOON 10 meter Dish, in Chur Switzerland, run by Christoph, HB9HAL,
See: http://www.radiosky.ch/home.php?nav=amateurfunk&page=eoa
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dishes at their Haystack facility. MIT based Radio Amateurs are anticipated to be active, in MIT station setup and operating.
The world wide event, will have different stations around the world communicating whenever the moon is visible between them, and in the case of Arecibo, there will be two hour windows of operations, each of the three scheduled days. Arecibo only has limited time viewing the moon due the limited “steering” pf about 20 degrees
FFI: Pat Barthelow AA6EG (Founder of Echoes of Apollo)
Echoes of Apollo
apolloeme@live.com
[...] Many of the world’s large parabolic antennas (dishes) along with hundreds of amateur radio operators and their gear will swing around to track the moon when it rises. Volunteers will then use the EME transmissions to link up with other dishes and antennas worldwide via the moon. Signals are literally being bounced off the moon’s surface and back to other stations on Earth, where they are received some 2.5 seconds later. more>>> [...]
Any plans on World Moon Bounce Day for 2011? On what band or bands is activity planned? I’d like to set up a station, if possible.
I live here in Ann Arbor, Michigan: The home of the University of Michigan. The U of M’s College of Engineering has an active Amateur Radio Club with the famous call sign of W8UM.
It would be great to have that call on the air for the 2011 event!
Any news!
73,
John F. Wasciuk
WA8TON / VO1TON
Plans for World Moon Bounce Day in 2011? Bands? Date? Time?