Recently Henk PA3GUO and Mike DK3WN sponsored an ANDE award to encourage reception of telemetry during the last few weeks of life of the Amateur Radio satellite ANDE.

ANDE was build by students from the US Naval Academy and deployed from the Space Shuttle (STS-116) on a return mission from the International Space Station (ISS) on 21 December 2006. Due to it’s low orbit it had a short lifetime and re-entered the earth’s atmosphere just over a year later on 25 December 2007.

It operated an APRS AX25 packet digipeater on 145.825 MHz as well as a Voice Synthesizer and other communications experiments.

The ANDE award was awarded to anyone who made QSOs via ANDE or received telemetry during its final 10 days in space.

Along with many others, I had my home station listening for packets from this oversized golfball in order to gather telemetry.  As I was travelling most of the 10 days prior to ANDE’s re-entry, I was unable to make any QSOs through it, but managed to receive enough telemetry to qualify for the award.