Around 17:00 on the 26th of December, most of the c3space crew was either on final approach or already on the ground at this years landing site. This year's base camp was located deep within the caverns of planet 39C3, where the only comes from the seemingly naturally occurring RGB leds and the occasional wild laser.

Not deterred, we deployed our powerful radio communications infrastructure and successfully established communication with the various other stations that apparently were mostly co-located with toilets. A surprising number of those transmission appeared to be SSTV containing memes ...uh... let's say important scientific image data.

Similar to the last congress we deployed our displays to the orbits and telemetry from various satellites. For this year's decoration we also added two moons, because we noticed a distinct lack of natural satellites around planet 39C3.

The projection mapped one will probably/hopefully/maybe return at the next event as an improved version.

Our Space Technology and Science Meetup on day 2 was a big success. We even had to a different area since our assembly wasn't able to fit all the awesome creatures that showed up. (We will reserve a larger space for the next one.) Still it was really cool meeting everyone and exchanging ideas and stories.

Of course the congress wouldn't be a congress without some talks. This year there were quite a few space related one. For a list of our recommendations, check out the 39c3 event page.

We had a lot of fun at the congress and we hope to see everyone again at the 39c3.

This year 38c3 mission control assigned c3space a premium landing zone, right next important ground support facilities, such the info desk and heaven. Shortly after touching down late on day 0, our mission specialists started deploying power and IEEE 802.3 compatible communications infrastructure.

During day 1 those capabilities were expanded to also include a VHF/UHF Transceiver with an omnidirectional antenna.

Note that we made sure to use incandescent lights when add seasonally appropriate decoration to our antennas, to avoid degrading our receiver performance. We promptly proceeded to utilize those capabilities to very successfully participate in a local toilet related communication exercise.

To allow for medium bandwidth communication, a dedicated wired link to c3isdn was installed to be used for ISDN based communication. A transmitter and receiver unit for Fax data was connected, to facilitate the legally binding exchange of our most important scientific datasets.

Of course there was a wide variety of space hardware on display at the assembly again.

There were two engineering models of the PICOBUS deployer, a Qubik PocketQube, the SIDLOC Spacecraft Identification and Localization payload, an engineering model of PHASMA, a SatNOGS-COMMS module and last but not least a working model of Curium.

Too keep track of the satellites that are actually in space, we once again used our SatNOGS monitor setup that we build for 36c3.

Besides our assembly there were also multiple talks at the congress, that might be of interest for space enthusiasts:

Hacking yourself a satellite - recovering BEESAT-1 Easily one of the most impressive talks of 38c3. The first official space privateer PistonMiner, tells the daunting tale of achieving remote code execution and ultimately patching the firmware, on a satellite that was presumed lost years ago.

An open-source guide to the galaxy: Our journey with Ariane 6 Paul and Manthos tell the story of two space missions, starting with sourcing a launch opportunity all the way to the final integration onto the rocket at the spaceport in French Guiana.

Euclid, das Weltraumteleskop - 180 Millionen Galaxien sind ein guter Anfang A talk about the first year of operation for Euclid a new space base telescope. Curious tales of moisture on mirrors and how accidentally x-ray your spacecraft. While the talk is in German there are English subtitles and audio tracks available.

Investigating the Iridium Satellite Network Technical deep dive into the newer protocol extensions used on the Iridium satellite network. This talk also contains a bit of SDR know-how and tips on how to listen to satellite constellations at scale.

Geostationäre Satelliten als Hobby A quick introduction on all kinds of fun that a hacker can have with geostationary satellites. Keeping track of accidental TV broadcasts and satellite radio pirates can quickly turn into a whole new hobby.

We had a lot of fun at the congress and we hope to see everyone again at the 39c3.

After spending 5 days in an Open Infrastructure Orbit around the planet 36C6, our crew noticed that mission critical consumables F and C were dangerously low. In addition to that, most of 36C3 telecommunication infrastructure was scheduled to be redeployed to different locations during the next days. Hence we opted not to extend our mission duration and initiated our return protocol during day 4. Material and crew arrived safely at their home bases during the next days.

We enjoyed a lot of great conversations with everyone who stopped by assembly and hopefully we inspired many of them to start their own space projects. At the very least we expect quite a few new SatNOGs stations to be build in 2020. Also there will be an additional blog post about our experiments with SSTV.

We'd like to thank everyone involved for a really awesome congress. Especially the congress orga, the OIO team and all the other volunteers, who made the event possible.

OIO Call for donations

One last thing: Creating a cool place to hang out like the OIO requires a lot of equipment, wood, screws, carpet, paint ... and all of that has to transported to the congress. While some things can be borrowed and we get other things for free, there is still a non-negligible amount of money required to make everything happen.

To cover for theses costs the OIO team has set up a better place campaign. As of today they are still 1636.42€ short of its 5000€ goal.

So if you enjoyed hanging out at the OIO, please consider sending a few euros their way.

Like the last two years there will be a C3Space assembly at the 36th Chaos Communication Congress.

See here for details.