KN4YZY

Amateur radio has reached Venus again. On October 17 and 18, the CAMRAS team used the historic Dwingeloo radio telescope in the Netherlands, station PI9RD, to send signals toward Venus. Each leg of the trip was about 42 million km, so the echoes took almost five minutes to come home. Germany’s Astropeiler Stockert and a dish at Westerbork picked them up, and after averaging about 40 minutes of echoes the team decoded the short message VENUS ECHO.

Earth-Venus-Earth contacts are extremely rare, and this one is a great reminder of how far weak-signal and EME techniques can stretch. The team plans to publish results and release the raw data.

Source: CAMRAS, Earth-Venus-Earth 2026