Date: February 2024
Amount: $26,040

The SETI Institute began as part of NASA’s SETI program and has grown into a top research organization, with a mission to explore, understand and expand the origin and nature of life in the universe. In collaboration with GNU Radio, a free and open software development toolkit used with external RF hardware to create software-defined radios (SDR’s), they are meeting at SETI’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) to participate in a three day in-person hackathon.

This is not the first hackathon that the two groups have hosted: the original hackathon took place in 2019, and building on the success of the original hackathon, the 2024 hackathon will take place in May or June and will include events such as an overview of the ATA, along with viewing the hardware, such as digitizers, antennas, feeds, and the backend beamformer/correlator. Participants will then be separated into groups to work on a variety of tasks, including:

• Characterizing the interference environment at the site,
• Observing and demodulating satellites and interplanetary spacecraft, and
• Observing astronomical targets, including Galactic hydrogen and pulsars

Learn more at https://www.seti.org/press-release/seti-institute-and-gnu-radio-join-forces.