[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-amateur-radio-voice-command-launches-doom-on-esa-satellite":10,"sections":41},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":30,"tags":31,"sources":36,"feedback":40,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":40,"total_tokens":40},12698,"amateur-radio-voice-command-launches-doom-on-esa-satellite","Amateur Radio Voice Command Launches Doom on ESA Satellite","A Norwegian ham club got a 27 MB speech model in orbit to catch the word Doom, and the signal fix that made it work matters more than the game.","An ESA satellite launched Doom in late July after a radio club in Oslo said the word to it. The game is the least interesting part of the story.\n\nThe satellite is OPS-SAT PRETTY, which flies under ESA's OPS-SAT Space Lab program for outside experiments. The club, LA4O of the Norwegian Radio Relay League, worked with Tanagra Space on an experiment called PRETTY DOOMed. It took seven attempts, shared with a group in Poland. The command got through on the last two, both on the same day.\n\nRun 6, a morning pass, used a looped synthesized voice, and three of six captures detected the command. Run 7, in the evening, used a live operator at a microphone, and one of five usable captures did. The club transmitted on the 23 cm band (1296 MHz narrowband FM) at about 80 W, pointing a helix antenna by hand.\n\nOn board, software-defined radio, meaning software doing the tuning that fixed circuits usually handle, passes audio to a 27 MB quantized English speech model. Quantized means compressed to fit the satellite's limited computer. A matcher then looks for the word Doom. The live transcript read \"AND FAR BRIEFLY PLAYING DOOM STEAM DOOM PRECIPATED\", which still held two exact matches. The morning runs passed only on fuzzy tolerance, with transcripts such as \"PLAY DOON\".\n\nThe early attempts produced mostly static. About 170 kHz of spectrum reached the FM discriminator for a signal of roughly ±5 kHz. Offline analysis produced a fix: find the peak, shift it to baseband, filter and decimate before demodulating. Delivering the update took about a week. The Oslo group's own effort took 59 days and about 7,200 NOK (about $770), pizza included.\n\nThis is not the first Doom in orbit. OPS-SAT-1 ran it in 2023, but that was a game launched the ordinary way. Here the achievement is pulling a specific command out of orbital noise, and doing it by uploading a patch to hardware already in space.\n\nProject lead Georges Labrèche said the voice was only a test signal, and the team has demonstrated \"a satellite that can listen to any type of radio signal.\" That is the team's own framing, and one detection in five usable live captures is a thin base for it. Tanagra proposes repeat runs that keep the original data and send it back to Earth, which would let researchers test the live-voice result properly.","[\"space\",\"satellites\",\"amateur-radio\",\"speech-recognition\"]","2026-11-10T10:30:00.000Z","2026-11-10T11:39:56.282Z","2026-11-10T11:39:56.448Z","published",null,[24],{"id":25,"reviewer":26,"round":27,"reason":28,"status":29},"editor-r1","editor",1,"Change 'Tanagra plans repeat runs' to 'proposes', since the source says only that Tanagra proposes them and the draft overstates certainty; the rest checks out against the source.","resolved","science",[32,33,34,35],"space","satellites","amateur-radio","speech-recognition",[37],{"name":38,"url":39},"Tom's Hardware","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.tomshardware.com\u002Ftech-industry\u002Fspace\u002Forbiting-esa-satellite-plays-doom-after-receiving-voice-commands-from-amateur-radio-operators-on-earth-27-mb-ai-speech-model-executes-the-game-on-the-seventh-attempt",0,{"sections":42},[43,48,53,58,63,68,73,77,82,87,92,97,102,107],{"name":44,"slug":45,"count":46,"latest_published_at":47},"AI","ai",7144,"2026-11-12T13:27:45.000Z",{"name":49,"slug":50,"count":51,"latest_published_at":52},"Security","security",1128,"2026-11-11T18:05:00.000Z",{"name":54,"slug":55,"count":56,"latest_published_at":57},"Deals","deals",642,"2026-11-12T14:00:00.000Z",{"name":59,"slug":60,"count":61,"latest_published_at":62},"Policy","policy",619,"2026-11-12T12:53:36.000Z",{"name":64,"slug":65,"count":66,"latest_published_at":67},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",364,"2026-11-12T11:12:32.000Z",{"name":69,"slug":70,"count":71,"latest_published_at":72},"Hardware","hardware",336,"2026-11-12T11:24:43.000Z",{"name":74,"slug":30,"count":75,"latest_published_at":76},"Science",230,"2026-11-12T10:00:00.000Z",{"name":78,"slug":79,"count":80,"latest_published_at":81},"Software","software",168,"2026-11-11T17:36:49.000Z",{"name":83,"slug":84,"count":85,"latest_published_at":86},"Startups","startups",159,"2026-11-11T12:30:00.000Z",{"name":88,"slug":89,"count":90,"latest_published_at":91},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",127,"2026-11-11T19:00:44.000Z",{"name":93,"slug":94,"count":95,"latest_published_at":96},"General","general",118,"2026-11-11T16:49:42.000Z",{"name":98,"slug":99,"count":100,"latest_published_at":101},"Gaming","gaming",107,"2026-11-12T10:09:03.000Z",{"name":103,"slug":104,"count":105,"latest_published_at":106},"Reviews","reviews",38,"2026-10-20T12:00:00.000Z",{"name":108,"slug":109,"count":110,"latest_published_at":111},"How-To","how-to",8,"2026-10-05T09:00:00.000Z"]