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The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in northern California has hosted a three-day international “hackathon” to develop new capabilities for the observatory.
The event, sponsored by the Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) charitable foundation in partnership with the SETI Institute, the Breakthrough Listen Initiative, and GNU Radio, brought together 16 participants from the United States and abroad. Their work covered a broad spectrum of projects from advancing the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute’s mission and radio astronomy, to tracking Earth-orbiting satellites and creating new educational tools.
The ATA, a dedicated SETI facility, comprises 42 dishes, each six metres in diameter. Recent upgrades to its receivers have boosted sensitivity, while new digital signal processing systems allow researchers to monitor more frequency channels simultaneously.
The array’s flexible design means it can be operated as a single system or split so individual antennas support different projects at the same time.
One of the ATA’s back-end systems runs on GNU Radio, an open-source software platform for building signal processing systems. GNU Radio principal investigator Derek Kozel said the software allows researchers to replace expensive, custom-built hardware with configurable, adaptable code.
“GNU Radio is changing the paradigm by replacing hardware with easily configurable software, providing scientists and engineers with remarkable flexibility,” he said. “And because it’s open-source, anyone can contribute.”
Hackathon participants tackled projects ranging from refining the positioning of geosynchronous satellites to classifying signals streaming from the telescope, and developing methods for real-time pulsar detection.
SETI Institute adjunct senior scientist Steve Croft, who organised the hackathon, said few observatories offered the same hands-on opportunities.
“Hackathon attendees worked on topics as diverse as precise satellite positioning, signal classification, and real-time pulsar detection,” Croft said.
SETI Institute’s Bernard M. Oliver chair, Andrew Siemion, said the collaboration highlighted the role of community-driven innovation in advancing radio astronomy and the search for intelligent life.
“By working together with partners from academia and industry, we’re pushing forward the frontiers of radio astronomy technology and demonstrating that SETI is an effort where people from a wide range of backgrounds and skills can make a real impact,” Siemion said.
The SETI Institute is a non-profit research organisation focused on understanding the origins and prevalence of life in the universe, with partnerships across industry, academia, and government, including NASA and the US National Science Foundation.
ARDC supports advancements in digital communications, amateur radio, and information technology, while GNU Radio’s open-source framework is widely used in academia, industry, and government.
The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, the most comprehensive search for extraterrestrial “technosignatures” aims to survey 1 million nearby stars, the Milky Way’s galactic plane, and 100 nearby galaxies.
This story was originally published by Cyber Daily’s sister brand, Space Connect.
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