NJ Museum Revives TIROS Satellite Dish After 40 Years 28
evanak writes TIROS was NASA's Television Infrared Observation Satellite. It launched in April 1960. One of the ground tracking stations was located at the U.S. Army's secret "Camps Evans" Signals Corps electronics R&D laboratory. That laboratory (originally a Marconi wireless telegraph lab) became the InfoAge Science Center in the 2000s. [Monday], after many years of restoration, InfoAge volunteers (led by Princeton U. professor Dan Marlowe) successfully received data from space. The dish is now operating for the first time in 40 years! The received data are in very raw form, but there is a clear peak riding on top of the noise background at 0.4 MHz (actually 1420.4 MHz), which is the well-known 21 cm radiation from the Milky Way. The dish was pointing south at an elevation of 45 degrees above the horizon.
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Tiros: first global weather photo (Score:5, Interesting)
Although I personally find the idea of resurrecting an old dish rather 'non-news', Tiros was pretty cool series of satellites. Here is the the first (composite) photo of global weather taken using the infrared cameras on an early Tiros: https://history.nasa.gov/SP-16... [nasa.gov]
Re: Tiros: first global weather photo (Score:1)
Why is that site giving me a cert error? And whybwould NASA be using Symantec certs instead of USG ones (DOD makes their own, after all)?
Re: Tiros: first global weather photo (Score:4, Informative)
Yea, odd.. Actually the http server delivers the same picture - cf. http://history.nasa.gov/SP-168... [nasa.gov]
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It gives you errors because, while the certificate is an actual, valid certificate, it wasn't created for the subdomain they have it installed on.
how much fuel is left? (Score:1)
Trying to read the article (which link is is anyway?) some of these links are not loading.
Anyway, how much fuel does this thing have left?
Re: how much fuel is left? (Score:1)
I think there's more than one TIROS/N sat in use, the last reaching orbit in 1998. That's not what this article is about: these guys reactivated an old tracking station on NJ (which can hardly be called Earth), not an old satellite.
as much fuel as it needs.. (Score:4, Informative)
It's a dish - so it uses electricity from the grid.
Re:how much fuel is left? (Score:4, Informative)
Not that you would know it from the summary, but they have revived the dish, not the Satellite. They are receiving natural radio waves, nothing from TIROS.
It's a radio telescope (Score:3)
So, they have shown that they can mount a receiver on an existing radio telescope, and receive radio waves.
That's cool and all, but not exactly newsworthy.
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Well, I dunno... the dish has mechanical parts that are 40 years old. What condition were they in? Did they need to replace any motors or bearings or control electricals or build new interfaces to old obsolete ones? Did they have to do anti-corrosion measures, maybe even paint the thing? It may have been quite a project. I'm not clicking no links that people have deemed to be a "hack attack" so am not about to read the original article.
No, it started life as a TLM-18 Antenna.... (Score:1)
Well, I dunno... the dish has mechanical parts that are 40 years old. What condition were they in? Did they need to replace any motors or bearings or control electricals or build new interfaces to old obsolete ones? Did they have to do anti-corrosion measures, maybe even paint the thing? It may have been quite a project.
Yes, parts had to be replaced and rebuilt. The drives were replaced, the elevation assembly was re-manufactured, feeds were fabricated (one is recycled from another project), and, yes, it was painted.
Let's not ignore the highly effective job the Army did in de-militarizing the TLM-18. They removed or rendered inoperable the drive controls, pinned the antenna to prevent motion (required a cutting torch to free the mechanism) removed the control console, and striped off the feeds and feed lines. Thi
Ah yes, Fort Monmouth (Score:2)
I remember seeing that dish when I worked at Concurrent Computer in nearby Oceanport. I also volunteered at Ft. Monmouth during the 1st Gulf war operating their Army MARS [army.mil] station AAR2USI [k2usa.org] providing comms between deployed soldiers and their families stateside.
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I also volunteered at Ft. Monmouth during the 1st Gulf war operating their Army MARS [army.mil] station AAR2USI [k2usa.org] providing comms between deployed soldiers and their families stateside.
When Fort Monmouth shut down, the MARS station moved to Camp Evans. It's currently located in Building 9116, adjacent to the TLM-18
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Megahertz. We have dishes here that can receive that band, although our two 26 meter dishes (almost as old as the TIROS dish) are equipped as an interferometer on 2.4GHz and 8.5GHz.
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The Hydrogen line is at 1420 MHz (AKA 21 cm). That long wavelength is why this dish can be made of high tech chicken wire, instead of having a solid surface.
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A dish at "0.4 Mhz" wouldn't be effective. Has to be Mhz. Don't know how to relate the number "0.4 Mhz" with "1420 Mhz." 0.4 meters would be 1000 Mhz. Who the H wrote that gibberish, anyway?
Other old tech (Score:3)