ISS SSTV – Dec 2021

Just about every year between xmas and New Year, there are SSTV broadcasts from the ISS (International Space Station) which can be received worldwide.

I use my QFH antenna which isn’t ideal as it is tuned for 137.6MHz, with the broadcasts being on 148.5MHz, however this works well enough that I can pick up the transmissions without having to have an additional antenna / SDR combination.

This year, the theme was linked to lunar exploration. With the broadcasts coming from the Zarya module, which is part of the Russian area of the ISS, there was a mixture of both Russian plus non-Russian images.

This was my best image capture and it is a near perfect one, probably my best ever in aligning a good pass and a near total absence of RF noise for the entire pass which is two minutes long.

This is one of 12 images which were broadcast. I was able to pick up data from 15 different passes and this resulted in 18 different images being captured.

This is a more typical “good” image where I got most of the image without noise, although it is very clear that there were some noise issues with most of the “Luna Exploration” header missing plus some clear noise bands resulting in image artifacts.

This is an example of a very poor image quality, although there is just enough data to recognize that an “image” was captured.

Having been able to decode at least one recognizable image, this enabled me to be awarded another ARISS diploma, one of several I’ve been awarded for being able to capture ISS SSTV images over the years.