Can you play chess with a satellite?

Can you play chess with a satellite?

You would certainly have heard of computers playing chess with humans and I have told you about a satellite which grows microgreens out there in space. Now there is an amateur radio satellite which allows radio amateurs to play chess with opponent as an on-board computer on the satellite. That is what is proposed by URESAT-1, to which you can sent FSK frames with the chess movements and the on-board computer will answer in its telemetry! In addition to this unique functionality among amateur radio satellites, it has an FM voice transponder which allows contact between radio amateurs on the ground and a digipeater of AX.25 and APRS frames. So you can call it as a three-in-one amateur radio satellite.

URESAT-1 which has the ITU designation as HADES-B is a 1.5 P Pocketqube satellite hosted by URE, the Spanish Amateur Radio Union. It was launched on 12th June 2023 and has an altitude of around 530 km. First successful receipt of telemetry signals was confirmed on 26th June 2023 using a radio telescope in California. Nominal Uplink frequency is 145.975 MHz and Downlink at  436.888 MHz. According to the URE blog post on 18th July 2023, telemetry, CW and an SSTV image was received from URESAT-1 by a 25 meter wide radio telescope in the Netherlands. Even though they have attempted execution of commands including those for antenna deployment, it was not yet successful as on 8th August 2023. So radio amateurs will have to wait a bit more to use the FM transponder at URESAT-1, leave alone play chess with the spacecraft! When URESAT-1 starts operating as intended, the project team will release a Linux program which will allow players to send their chess moves to the satellite.