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Space

In October 2008, Richard Garriott (of Ultima fame) spent 12 days aboard the International Space Station. During his time aboard the ISS, Richard communicated with various radio amateurs back on Earth. Although the ISS already carries a dual-band 2m/70cm amateur radio transceiver, Richard took with him a Kenwood VC-H1 which allows handheld slow-scan TV operation. For much of the trip, when everyone was too busy to play with radios, the SSTV camera was pointing out of the window, photographing the earth below.

Here are some of the images received at my QTH in Glasgow:

The first picture I received from the ISS! I tried to match the clouds up to a NOAA pic, but couldn't.

The SSTV equipment was turned off for the first few days, as various spacewalks and other bits of maintenance were carried out. For fairly obvious reasons, they want to limit the amount of non-essential radio chatter while they're working outside. The noise bands present were due to large trees and a tall building blocking the signal while the ISS was at a low elevation.

Much clearer, showing the same view but with a bit less cloud.

On the 22nd of October I was lucky enough to get a nice high pass and three usable SSTV pictures. This is the first - the "darklies" are probably because I had the recorder gain a little too high and was getting some clipping.

Hello Richard! A shot inside the ISS. There weren't that many of these taken, it seems.

Not sure what caused the deep fade on that picture. It doesn't look like local QRM.