In 2014, China sent Chang’e 5-T1 around the moon using a Long March 3C rocket. The 5-T1 was a test of some of their systems for the Change’e 5 sample return mission.

Piggybacked to the third stage of the rocket was the Luxembourg built Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M). At 14 kg, 4M was the smallest successful lunar probe ever.

To be sure, it was nothing fancy: the only science hardware was a radiation meter and ham radio transmission experiment. It had no propulsion or attitudinal control: it just went where the third stage went around the moon and into a wide ellipse around the earth. It outlasted its planned mission length and transmitted data for 18 days.

I mean, not bad for 14 kg.

http://moon.luxspace.lu/radiation-experiment/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Memorial_Moon_Mission

dv said:

In 2014, China sent Chang’e 5-T1 around the moon using a Long March 3C rocket. The 5-T1 was a test of some of their systems for the Change’e 5 sample return mission.

Piggybacked to the third stage of the rocket was the Luxembourg built Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M). At 14 kg, 4M was the smallest successful lunar probe ever.

To be sure, it was nothing fancy: the only science hardware was a radiation meter and ham radio transmission experiment. It had no propulsion or attitudinal control: it just went where the third stage went around the moon and into a wide ellipse around the earth. It outlasted its planned mission length and transmitted data for 18 days.

I mean, not bad for 14 kg.

http://moon.luxspace.lu/radiation-experiment/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Memorial_Moon_Mission

So that means Luxembourg has a more active space program than Australia. :-(

Hold on, not just 14 kg for a Moon Mission, 14 kg for the first ever commercial moon mission.

Also includes amateur radio reception of signals from Lunar Orbit, with 60 participants. How successful were the amateurs at capturing the signals from a 1.5 Watt transmitter in lunar orbit, and how did they do it? (wookiemeister take note).

mollwollfumble said:

How successful were the amateurs at capturing the signals from a 1.5 Watt transmitter in lunar orbit, and how did they do it? (wookiemeister take note).

They did it using ordinary ham radio sets, and they were very successful.

no good for HD transmission to earth

I wonder if they set something up so they could communicate directly with the device (you’d think so) using the same frequency?

wookiemeister said:

no good for HD transmission to earth

No, quite a low baud rate.

dv said:

mollwollfumble said:

How successful were the amateurs at capturing the signals from a 1.5 Watt transmitter in lunar orbit, and how did they do it? (wookiemeister take note).

They did it using ordinary ham radio sets, and they were very successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMSAT
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSCAR