An amateur radio operator on an Oslo rooftop successfully commanded an orbiting European Space Agency satellite to launch the 1993 video game Doom using a spoken voice transmission on July 27, 2026.
The transmission targeted the OPS-SAT PRETTY experimental cubesat launched in 2023, according to Gizmodo. Operating as part of the Oslo Group of the Norwegian Radio Relay League, the team spent 59 days and about 7200 NOK or $775, including pizza, to adapt the satellite software for voice reception, as Space reported.
Initial tests on July 3 produced unrecognizable audio due to an overly wide receiver channel, which engineers subsequently narrowed. The European Space Agency’s experimental CubeSat is run by a consortium including the European Space Agency, while Estonia’s Tanagra Space developed the machine learning and software program for the feat.
Satellite operators usually send commands as digital packets over radio, relying on strict protocols built over decades with names like the CCSDS TC Space Data Link Protocol and the European Packet Utilisation Standard.
Traditional satellite operations involve ground stations sending binary data packets known as telecommands to spacecraft according to specific standards, rather than ordinary spoken audio. In contrast, this demonstration utilized software-defined radio, GNU Radio, and Sherpa-ONNX to process signals entirely on board.
During an evening pass on July 27, Jon Bergli Heier transmitted the command PRETTY play Doom Doom
from a rooftop in Oslo, using the call sign LB9BJ, Space noted.
The operator uttered a sequence of voice commands starting with the radio call sign, stating LIMA ALFA FOUR OSCAR, PRETTY PLAY DOOM DOOM,
with the first part being the call sign and the second part being the command for the satellite. The experiment followed an earlier morning test that used a looped synthesized voice transmission, according to BigGo Finance.
The team borrowed a line wrongly credited to Pippi Longstocking: I have never tried that before, so I should definitely be able to do that.
Software-defined radio and GNU Radio handled signal processing, while Sherpa-ONNX executed speech recognition, according to BigGo Finance. Both attempts on July 27, covering the morning and evening sessions, succeeded.
Eskil Hadland, representative for the amateur radio team with the call sign LB6AJ, stated that they are radio amateurs with the emphasis on amateurs, noting that satellite work was not something their club did and they had no budget for it. Hadland reflected on the achievement in a Tanagra Space statement quoted by Space:
Our tiny ground station shouted at an ESA spacecraft, and was heard,
Eskil Hadland, representative for the Norwegian amateur radio team (call sign LB6AJ)
However, the system matched degraded speech against a constrained vocabulary and did not establish open-ended natural-language understanding.
Earlier coverage: Google Project Suncatcher Runs First Orbital TPU Workload