down to earth

LRPT image received from METEOR-M No.2-3 using a handheld antenna.

This was my first attempt at receiving weather satellite image transmissions with a software-defined radio.

Thanks to Dennis for hosting the workshop and hand-building these surprisingly functional Y-shaped antennas. This time we synced with METEOR-M No.2-3, a recent Russian weather satellite. It continuously circles the Earth in low orbit and periodically passes overhead, making it one of the few non-encrypted weather satellites hobbyists can still receive signals from.

The main tools were SatDump and an RTL-SDR connected to the antenna.

The image shows southeastern China, where I was when I received the signal. The QR-code-like glitches scattered across the frame are areas where signal packets were lost or corrupted in transmission—the satellite's broadcast briefly arriving incomplete.

There's something specific about pulling an image of your own city out of radio noise. The signal traveled from a satellite in low orbit, refracted through atmospheric interference, decoded by open-source software, and arrived as this. A slightly broken postcard from above.