First SSTV image from ISS

October 15, 2008 | Amateur Radio, Amateur Satellite | By: Mark VandeWettering

It’s not too exciting, but it’s a start. During a 30 degree pass, I managed to get MacRobot SSTV to decode this partial image. It’s not the greatest SSTV decoder: it seems to miss the VIS preamble almost all the time, and loses sync fairly often when noise interrupts, which when you think of it, is pretty inexcusable. I’m told the various Windows programs are better. But it’s a start, and until I write something better, it’s all I got. I’ll be trying for some more passes later today.

Addendum: During my second pass of the day, the SSTV was off, but we heard the voice of Richard Garriot answering questions (which we can’t hear) but which were very legible in response. It starts out a little scratchy, and there are relatively long bursts of static where we don’t hear the questions, but his answers are interesting. Enjoy!

Richard Garriot Speaks from the ISS (MP3)

Addendum2: Here is a link to a master repository of received SSTV images from the ISS. Check back frequently.

Comments

Comment from Sergei Ludanov
Time 4/1/2009 at 1:19 pm

Hi Mark,
You are right MacRobot SSTV was a poor excuse for SSTV software (it was my first experience writing Cocoa app). However this year I completely rewrote the program (it is called MultiScan now) and it works way better than MacRobot. If you’ll have a chance to use it let me know.

Thanks and 73,

Sergei KD6CJI