A very successful EVE effort has happened. This is an amateur radio Earth-Venus-Earth (EVE) communications attempt, which builds on the many years of legacy established by AMSAT-DL in 2009, saw a big step forward by CAMRAS/Dwingeloo in 2025, and has now been achieved in 2026.
The achievement is sending and receiving a reflected communications signal, with modulated data, off the surface of Venus. This is like EME, but with a much less cooperative reflector over a much more difficult path. Results so far show that Open Research Institute’s (ORI) link analysis and validation documentation of the March 2025 results were correct.
Pete Wyckoff, instrumental in the signal design, writes “This is one of the greatest projects of my 36 years as an FCC-licensed radio amateur. If you saw the ORI presentation at DEFCON 2026, we were fairly certain it would work. We anxiously awaited the narrow range of dates where this can work nonetheless. For perspective, the round trip time is nearly 5 minutes at the speed of light.”
Dwingeloo Radio Telescope transmitted amateur radio signals toward the planet Venus on 1299.5 MHz on 17 October 2026. The reflections from Venus were received by Astropeiler Stockert, Effelsberg, ASTRON Westerbork, Lovell, and eMerlin radio telescopes. Additional communications attempts will be made over the next two weeks, while Venus is as close to Earth as it can get in its orbit.
The message was modulated in a channel-specific waveform using M-FSK with forward error correction. The waveform was created by CAMRAS volunteers in collaboration with volunteers at ORI. The successfully decoded message was “VENUS ECHO”.
The signal design customized for Venus wasn’t the only modulation attempted. The signal was designed for ~20 meter dish size, but with the additional margin from Effelsberg at 100 meters, this capacity allowed for experimentation with traditional “off the shelf” low SNR modes. There’s a lot to analyze and compare between the different modes and what was received at the different sites. All of the work will be openly published and the datasets shared by Dwingeloo. Please see https://www.camras.nl/en/blog/2026/earth-venus-earth-2026/
This is very exciting work not just for amateur microwave, but for citizen science and amateur radio experimenters. Congratulations to everyone involved in this significant and enduring achievement. The list includes but is not limited to Thomas Telkamp, Hans Holsink, Wolfgang Herrmann, Tammo Jan Dijkema, Jan Kappert, Dick Harms, Cees Bassa, Jan van Muijlwijk, Pete Wyckoff, Paul Williamson, Courtney Duncan, Rose Easton, Gary K6MG, Matthew Wishek, Lee Blanton, Loretta Kane, John K5JBT, Matthew Smith, Brian Yee, and Thomas Poulin. Thank you to SBMS and DEFCON RF Village for the feedback and support across the board.
With more EVE attempts over the next two weeks, from Dwingeloo as well as DSES, the body of work will only grow from here. Rick Hambly K0GD and many others have been working very hard at DSES to make a successful EVE attempt, and we are all looking forward to news from DSES integration, test, and operations for EVE 2026.