Amateur Monitors Stray Satellite

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30943, 27 December 1965, Page 3

Amateur Monitors Stray Satellite

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, December 26

An Auckland radio amateur has monitored Oscar 4, one of three stray satellites which went into orbit last Wednesday after an abortive attempt to launch four satellites simultaneously from Cape Kennedy.

Mr J. Morgan, of Manurewa, monitored signals from the satellite for about an hour but was unable to read them clearly. The secretary of the Auckland VHF group, Mr C. Betson, said that Oscar 4 had been orbited as a satellite for radio amateurs.

“Once we find its path, we will make use of it,” he said. “We could possibly communicate with other countries of the world.” Radio hams in the United States had built Oscar 4 and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency had helped to launch it. If the project had been successful, all four satellites would have gone into orbit about 20,000 miles above the Equator. Because of the misfiring, the three satellites went into long, elliptical orbits ranging from 120 miles to 20,900 miles above the earth.

Their exact orbit is not yet known.

Oscar 4 is designed to receive amateur radio operators’ signals transmitted at 144.1 megacycles in the twometre band, translate them, and retransmit them on 432 megacycles.