Using the GRAVES Radar to Listen to Reflections from Meteors, Planes and Spacecraft

Over on his blog DK8OK has created a post that explains how European SDR users can use their devices to monitor reflections coming off the Graves space radar. Graves is a space surveillance radar based in France which is designed to track spacecraft and orbital debris.

If you are in Europe you can also make use of the Graves radar simply by tuning to its frequency of 143.050 MHz and listening for reflections of its signal bouncing off things like meteors, planes and spacecraft. Since Graves points its signal upwards, it’s unlikely that you’ll directly receive the signal straight from the antenna, instead you’ll only see the reflections from objects.

DK8OK also explains in his post how you can use SDR-Console V3 to create a level diagram which shows power vs time, allowing you to count reflections and visualize the response of the reflection.

Any SDR that can tune to VHF frequencies such an an RTL-SDR can be used for monitoring reflections like this. If you aren’t in Europe you might consider looking for distant strong transmitters such as for TV/FM which you could also monitor for reflections.

Graves reflection of a meteor trail visualized in SDR-Console V3.
Graves reflection of a meteor trail visualized in SDR-Console V3.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

5 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Mathieu Demeestere

Bummer that a lot of links on this site are starting to get deprecated, I often find myself having to go to the internet archive just to follow tutorials on here.

Love to those and this project though, you guys have resparked my interest in space and radio.

Neil

thank goodness for archive.org 🙂

WXR bandit

Does the same thing work with weather radar? If a TV station or NWS radar is in the area spinning a jigawatt wxr transceiver, and i point my dish at the storm, shouldnt i be able to receive some of the return from their transmitter? They have already done the hard work of illuminating the storm, it should be much easier to catch the returns with a small dish pointed in the right direction.

duval

Grave frequency is 143.050 Mhz instead of 143.50 Khz
Laurent
LFRN

Max

I have published some screenshots of reflections during the Perseids shower using SDRSharp and the blog’s V3 dongle.
Here