On the 22nd of March 2025, a group of Dutch radio amateurs managed to successfully bounce a 23cms microwave signal off the planet Venus using the 25-metre Dwingeloo telescope.
At the time, Venus at the time was at its closest point to Earth with a distance of 42-million kilmetres. This happens approximately every 580 days which is about a year and seven months.
For the test, they used a 278 second long tone at a frequency of 1299.5 MHz. The return path from the Earth to Venus and back was about 280 seconds which is 4 minutes and 40 seconds. They repeated this cycle four times and a sample of the returned signal is shown below.
The test transmissions were also heard by another group using the 25m Stockert radio telescope in Germany.
They hope to resume their Earth-Venus-Earth (EVE) at the next closest approach in October of 2026.
Link... https://www.camras.nl/en/blog/2025/first-venus-bounce-with-the-dwingeloo-telescope/
