On October 9, 2013, the spacecraft Juno will fly by Earth to get a gravity assist and put it on a course for Jupiter. To celebrate this event, NASA is inviting amateur radio operators around the world to say “HI” to Juno in a coordinated Morse Code message. Juno’s radio and plasma wave experiment, called Waves, should be able to detect the message if enough people participate.
NASA is asking us to send the letters “HI” in verrrrry slow Morse Code on 26 different frequencies in the 10m band. I say verrrrry slow because each dit is 30 seconds long.
The event is to start at 1800 UTC on October 9 and last until 2040 UTC. The “HI” message is to be repeated every 10 minutes, beginning at 18:00, 18:10, 18:20, etc. as shown in the figure below.
The Say HI to Juno Web page has much more information on this event. The page include a table of frequencies on which to transmit and information on how to get a QSL card. There is also a Facebook page.
I think that this is a very cool event, and I hope that if you have the capability of transmitting on 10m that you’ll participate. Let’s all say HI to Juno!
Leave a Reply