JS1YMG: Amateur Radio Station on the Moon!

I have been hearing about Moonbounce or bouncing your amateur radio signal off the moon to communicate with other amateur radio stations on the earth ever since I became an amateur radio operator in 1985. But this is the first time that I am hearing of a amateur radio station with its own callsign on the moon! That is JS1YMG, the amateur radio license secured by JAXA Ham Radio Club (JHRC), JQ1ZVI. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has successfully landed their Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on 19 January, 2024. SLIM had released two small lunar surface probes LEV-1 and LEV-2. LEV-1 has the amateur radio callsign JS1YMG,  transmitting Morse code on 437.41 MHz since January 19, 2024. It has a 1 W UHF antenna with circular polarization.

An important challenge for lunar missions is to survive the 14 day lunar night in which temperature drops to subzero freezing levels which cause lack of solar power as well as malfunction of electronic circuits. JAXA has mentioned that SLIM was not designed to survive a lunar night. So the window of opportunity for radio amateurs may be over now and not sure whether it will ‘wake up’ again when the sun shines on it again!

C.A. Muller Radio Astronomy Station (CAMRAS) in the Netherlands could receive the UHF signals with their 25 m dish in Dwingeloo on 19 January 2024. About 30 radio amateurs were listening to their WebSDR! Even though I had heard about the SLIM mission from local news media, I came to know about the possibility of monitoring on WebSDR only today. So I missed the golden opportunity of tuning in to JS1YMG on the CAMRAS WebSDR.