Lets Solve Hackaday.com/Space!

Given the images of Bob Widlar and Hackadays post today about Bob Widlar, I decided to try his name as the login info for the Telnet server. Sure enough it worked!

Give it a try and dig deeper into the mystery:

Telnet 54.241.0.25

Login: bob

Password: widlar

Lots of interesting stuff on the server. Here is a screenshot of what I was able to see right off the bat:

Reading the license file shows the files in /AGC to be the "Apollo Guidance Computer". Hmmm, I wonder.

Also, the file "reminder.txt" has the lyrics to the song "Puff the Magic Dragon" by Leonard Lipton and Peret Yarrow. Not sure what this means yet...

So far several people, myself included, believe this is related to Hackaday's call for hackers and hams, since the countdown timer on the main page runs out shortly before the last opportunity to communicate with the ICE/ISEE3 satellite. This would make sense with the space theme, Apollo Guidance System and the "I'm floating in a most peculiar way" reference. Someone also mentioned the possibility of using a high altitude weather balloon to get a radio close to the satellite to receive its weak signal. But its not the time for speculation yet!

Here is what I have gathered from various YouTube and Hackaday comments. If you discovered any of these details, let me know and I will add you as a contributor. 

The numbers in "testblock 1" are hex for "I'm floating in a most peculiar way", a reference to the David Bowie song Space Oddity.

It looks like the mysterious text on the April fools day transmission had a QR code embedded in "testblock 2":

The QR code leads us to the following link http://hackaday.io/hacker/3935: Wouldnt you know it, Major Tom has a profile on hackaday?

The second transmission gives a string of numbers in the video. This string of numbers is an IP address given in its decimal form. Converting back to IP format we get the IP address: 54.241.0.25.

This address is a Telnet server, but the login and password are still unknown.

There are also images hidden in Transmission # 2 that show Bob Widlar and one of his famous circuits.

Image of Bob Widlar:

Image of Widlar's Current Source schematic: