Edgar Kaiser is an amateur ham radio operator (according to his Twitter profile) who has been monitoring radio signals from India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and sharing them via Twitter.
He raised an alarm on June 21 when there was no signal received from MOM since June 2, 2021.
Edgar Kaiser @df2mz
MOM showed extended activity today. It probably started with the curved trace before 12:30, then stopped and came back at 13:30. The emission ended 14:45 which is consistent with the usual short daily 10 min emission. https://t.co/vEOJsOYa49This led to a chain conversation about this topic among a few Indian tweeps (Twitter people). While these discussions were on, Times of India journalist Chethan Kumar shared an update from ISRO:
ISRO does not provide updates on the status of any spacecraft. Hence, we rely on amateur satellite watchers and radio frequency observers to get some of these updates. They perform yeoman’s service to space watchers like me in this regard.
This saga, though, ended with good news from Edgar himself. He shared a detection of signal once again from MOM signalling that it was well and alive.
Welcome back, indeed, MOM.
Space Reads
ISRO shared news of a result from a Chandrayaan-2 payload called the Solar X-Ray Monitor (SXM) about the solar corona. The last two news reports from ISRO have been very good at sharing news results and explaining the science in detail.
Skyroot Aerospace, an Indian private aerospace company that is building a private launch vehicle has shared news of the successful test of it’s third stage Kalam-100 engine.
Listen to the NewSpace India podcast episode with Nitish from Astrogate Labs. It’s lovely to see Indian companies working in areas where ISRO doesn’t. Also, it’s lovely to meet someone who sees beauty in communications satellites where most are fascinated by beautiful pictures from Earth observation satellites.
I enjoyed reading a power-packed version of Jatan Mehta’s Moon Monday issue #32. His tweet summarizes it best:
Jatan Mehta @uncertainquark
Last week in Moon exploration was 🔥 → China and Russia reveal Moonbase plans → NASA’s SLS rocket stacking up for launch → Japan passes space resources bill → @mastenspace teases a cool Moon water miner → @openlunar presents to @UNOOSA and more! 🚀 https://t.co/KPn7No9sV5After r/ISRO, there is now a sub-Reddit to track private space companies in India. Hoping to see similar community building around following private space companies in r/IndiaInSpace as we see in r/ISRO.
Create your profile
Only paying subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to log in.