Students are ‘Over The Moon’

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Students are ‘Over The Moon’

The moon missions of the 1960s were most certainly awe-inspiring, but for those of us who were perhaps young students here on Earth at the time, they were as distant an experience to us as the moon itself. Not so with Artemis II: With eight universities chosen by NASA to track the Orion spacecraft via radio, the moon became a close and almost palpable presence for the young.

Yes, tracking a moon mission can be a personal experience - as many students on several university campuses discovered. In Pennsylvania, Sawyer Mervis and Jake Wendt were up on a campus rooftop in the early morning hours with a parabolic antenna and other student-built equipment. They were collecting data for the US space agency NASA from the 248,655-mile flight around the moon. The receiving station had been a team project, with the Panther Amateur Radio Club at the University of Pittsburgh receiving guidance and support from faculty in various engineering departments.  

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Arrest for Interference with Emergency Radio Channels

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Police in central New York State have arrested a man and charged him with interfering with emergency radio channels by transmitting false statements over equipment he was unauthorised to use.

Local media reports said police stopped Chad Potter of Sherburne, New York, on the 31st of March while he was driving in a vehicle equipped with a number of radios tuned to frequencies where, according to police, he had been disrupting emergency services.

The Investigation into the reported radio interference dates back to 2021. Police said that fire, EMS and law enforcement operations were disrupted several times by his messages. The Media News report described one transmission as [quote[ "shots fired, shots fired" [endquote] - which reportedly caused concern and confusion among first-responders and the public.

On the day Potter was arrested on the radio-related charges, city police had pulled him over in relation to a traffic stop. Investigators said his vehicle was equipped with aftermarket lighting that made it look like he was an emergency responder. Police issued a citation to him for the lighting.

Britain Seeks Views Before it Drops the Hammer on Signal Jammers

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Britain Seeks Views Before it Drops the Hammer on Signal Jammers

The UK government is seeking views on radiofrequency jammers as it prepares legislation to ban the controversial devices.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) announced Friday that the government is seeking a deeper understanding of how signal-jamming devices are being used across a range of criminal activities.

Previous communications regarding plans to ban the devices have largely focused on how they can facilitate car thefts.

Today's announcement signals the government's concerns extend well beyond that, citing threats to home security systems and critical public infrastructure, including cell towers that support mobile and emergency service networks.

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