Amateurs Asked to Listen for RS-39 Satellite

The Chibis-M microsatellite, also known as RS-39 (RadioSputnik 39), was jettisoned from the Progress M-13M cargo spacecraft Tuesday evening (UTC).

The satellite is designed to study atmospheric phenomena such as Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flashes (TGFs) associated with lightning. RS-39 has CW beacons on 435.315 and 435.215 MHz and amateurs are asked to submit reception reports via email to the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences at amateur-rs39@chibis.cosmos.ru. Each report will be acknowledged with a special QSL.

The CW telemetry format is available here. Telemetry decoding software written by Mike Rupprecht, DK3WN, can be downloaded here.