The location of our latest expansion. (NASA photo.)

OneTubeRadio.com will soon have a lunar presence. On October 23, the 14 kilogram 4M-LXS spacecraft will be launched from China. The spacecraft was developed by LUXspace in Luxembourg and has now been transported to the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.   About eight days after launch, it will pass within between 7440 and 14,480 miles of the moon, depending on the final orbital injection vector. At this point, the craft will be approximately 248,000 miles from Earth.

One of the partners in the mission is the International Amateur Radio Union, and the spacecraft will be transmitting digital data throughout its mission, including during its lunar orbit phase. The transmissions will take place on 145.990 MHz using JT65B mode. The transmitter power will be 1.5 watts to a quarter-wave monopole antenna. Transmissions will begin about 77 minutes after launch. When the spacecraft is in the vicinity of the moon, the signal-to-noise ratio will be comparable to that of Earth-Moon-Earth communications (EME) signals routinely copied by hams, and thousands of amateurs equipped for EME should be able to decode the digital signals.

LUXspace made available a limited number of slots for 13-character messages to be sent from the moon. And one of those messages will be the URL for our parent website: w0is.com.  On that page, we have a direct link to OneTubeRadio.com.  (The direct URL for this site would have exceeded the 13-character limit.)

Only a limited number of messages can be sent, but there might still be available slots. You can upload your message at the 4M-LXS website. To steer your antenna to receive the signal, azimuth and elevaton tracking data for throughout the mission is also available.

More information is also available at the ARRL website.