The IEEE Spectrum reports on the Slow Scan
Television (SSTV) transmissions made from Alaska's HAARP facility by
radio amateur Chris Fallen KL3WX
In late September, Christopher Fallen and
technicians at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program
(HAARP) near Gakona, Alaska, switched on a giant array of 180 antennas.
They were hoping to produce radio-induced airglow, also known as
artificial aurora, as a way to better understand the mechanics of
natural aurora.
He embedded images into the powerful radio wave
that HAARP uses to heat a patch of the ionosphere, and alerted amateur
radio enthusiasts through Twitter. As the experiment ran, his feed began
to light up with tweets from listeners who were sending the images back
to him.
Fallen, an assistant professor at the University
of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute, had transmitted two UAF
logos, a cat photo, and a QR code granting the recipient 0.001 Bitcoin.
Messages returned from Pueblo, Colo., and
Victoria, British Columbia. Given that HAARP’s antennas point directly
up at the sky instead of out toward the horizon, Fallen was pleased with
the results. “As powerful as HAARP is, it’s just a big radio,” he says.
It’s actually a giant phased array radio
transmitter capable of sending 3.6 megawatts of energy into the
ionosphere.
Read the full story at
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/scientists-in-alaska-attempt-to-produce-fake-aurora-with-giant-antenna-array
