Date: May 2022
Amount: $299,959

The Deep Space Exploration Society (DSES) is a Colorado-based nonprofit organization dedicated to practical astronomy and space science, and amateur radio education for students, the general public, and society members. Their major project is restoring and operating a 60-foot dish antenna for radio astronomy and amateur radio experimenting. The site is located in Kiowa County, in Colorado. Since 2009, DSES volunteers have been working hard to restore and modernize the antenna and its support facilities. DSES currently supports radio astronomy and amateur radio projects with smaller antennas and provides educational outreach in radio astronomy and amateur radio.

Their goal is to become a regional center by constructing a modern building that will include a control room and ham shack large enough to accommodate visitors and student groups. The new facility will also have a meeting room, workshop, kitchenette, and a unisex restroom. An expanded control and educational building of 30 x 50 feet will enable DSES to engage universities and STEM students, participate in amateur radio contests, expand their investigation of weak signal propagation, and continue radio astronomy observations and data analysis of pulsars and hydrogen.

Update

This grant was successful in creating a new, modern, 30 x 50 foot building, along with related infrastructure such as electrical supply upgrades, air conditioning, restroom, kitchen area, fresh water cistern and septic system. There were a number of challenges in creating this new building in a very rural location, but DSES was ultimately successful.

The new building – the Site Operations Center (SOC) supplements the existing facilities on the DSES site – an “office” trailer and an underground facility that are both decades old and have significant infrastructure issues. The SOC supports the ongoing activities of this active organization and allows DSES to host more frequent, and larger meetings and events. The SOC enables DSES to better advance their mission to promote practical astronomy and space science education for students, the general public, and society members, especially in the hot summer months. At least one of the DSES Amateur Radio stations, and control systems for the 60 foot dish were relocated to a portion of the Site Operations Center.

See the new DSES Site Operations Center in this video by Michael Parsons K0FYR – (YouTube channel Ham-Solo) Deep Space Exploration Society’s 2024 Open House @ Plishner Radio Telescope In Haswell, CO – https://archive.org/details/youtube-I9lI8LBS75E.

The video includes visitors transmitting Amateur Radio Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) voice mode, which is not usually possible, using the DSES 60-foot dish and receiving their echoed, time-shifted transmissions due to the round-trip delay to the Moon.

For more information about DSES, go to http://dses.science/.