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satdump

Satellite data processing — receive, decode and image from weather and science satellites

What it does

Receives, demodulates and decodes the downlinks of a large number of weather and scientific satellites, turning raw IQ into calibrated images and data products. It handles NOAA APT, Meteor LRPT, GOES and the higher-rate polar-orbiter downlinks, live from an SDR or offline from a recording.

Why you would want it

It replaces a shelf of single-satellite decoders with one program that is actively maintained, and it is the reason several older APT and LRPT tools in the inventory are marked superseded rather than carried. Offline processing of a recorded pass means you can capture now and decode later, which matters when a pass is eight minutes long.

Before it will work

A receiver covering the band you want and an antenna suited to it — a turnstile or QFH for the polar orbiters. Nothing is required to process a recording someone else made, which makes it usable before you own hardware.

How it installs

  • apt: satdump

Known problems

Upstream's published .deb does not install on either Debian 13 or Ubuntu 26.04 — it is built for Ubuntu 24.04 and its dependencies have moved. Use the distribution package, which is what this manifest does. Live decoding of the high-rate downlinks is CPU-hungry; recording to disk and processing afterwards is the reliable path on modest hardware. Kali's package is a git snapshot rather than the 1.2.2 release, so behaviour can differ slightly from Debian's and Parrot's.

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade

Source: catalog/packages/satdump.yaml