It’s a great story—but here’s what NASA told us.
Source: Ham Radio ISS – How to Call Space Station Astronauts
Well written news report. News reports suggested a ham radio operator in India contacted the SpaceX Dragon crew on board Dragon (one of the astronauts is a ham radio operator). The story notes many hams (including me) have, in fact contacted ISS (mailbox/APRS) or crew (two of the crew on board right now are ham radio operators) and that this is fairly common.
In this case it appears the original ham radio operator in India may have gotten confused with a press conference link.
SpaceX may launch 30,000 more low altitude satellites added to the 12,000 it already plans to launch. OneWeb is launching 900 satellites and Amazon is planning over 3,000 satellites. There are predictions that any given moment, over 100 satellites will be visible crossing overhead, no matter where you may live.
Source: SpaceX and Starlink are changing the night sky, and fast – CNET
Astronomers have proposed a global network of radio receivers to search for fast radio bursts. Their concept would use either smart phones and an app listening to a portion of the cellular spectrum allocation, or a low cost device that could be plugged in to the USB port of personal computers.
Full paper available at the link.
Source: [1701.01475] Searching for giga-Jansky fast radio bursts from the Milky Way with a global array of low-cost radio receivers
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