> A signal as powerful as a refrigerator lightbulb That's about the most interesting part of the article, although it must be a gross oversimplification. If it

> A signal as powerful as a refrigerator lightbulb That's about the most interesting part of the article, although it must be a gross oversimplification. If it was actually just a single wattage lightbulb on a satellite, that would be actually funny. Now I wonder what kind of antennas are used 1W in the relevant band could be seen from such a distance. In the spherical cow on a frictionless plane kinda sense, 1W transmitting radially at a 100 Million km distance to earth for example, the earth surface would see roughly 1e-48 of that. The deep space network covering much less area than that would see even less, I guess it wouldn't see anything. > Like much of NASA, which receives less than 1 percent of the total federal budget every year, the DSN is underfunded Once a century we will give all the budget to just one institution.