Anyone with an EME UHF antenna want to earn some maintenance money for their Ham radio addiction?

I just became aware of (unverified yet) that there are small satellites being built with UHF downlinks but that need EME size ground stations to bring down their 3 MHz wide science data. The most expensive part of their missions is the $$$ sent to the big NASA tracking networks.

During EME contests we see lists of hundreds of Amateurs with huge EME antenna capability… I wonder if there is an opportunity here for some individuals?

The UHF is not in the amateur segment but they thought it was overlapping the 450-470 MHz LMR spectrum. This makes sense, because a 1W transmitter spreading its energy over 3 MHz from 500 miles away from the ground is not going to interfere with anything in the LMR services.

But also this is probably too far from the normal narrowband ham EME activity at 432 to have any gain up at 460 MHz. But for those EME hams with dishes, a simple feed change might give them a source of income. Note, this is nothing to do with amateur radio, or rules, or anything. Just a thought, that if you have a big dish in your backyard, you might be able to make use of it for reception…

Is anyone subscribed to an EME email reflector that is aware of the number of very large EME dishes ?

Just another crazy thought…

Bob, WB4APR