from what I could see / hear during the reentry feed ---- the astronauts had a satellite phone (assume to be either INMARSAT or IRIDIUM) - this was mentioned during an interview - that they were calling people kinda randomly..... I do not know of any actual FACT-BASED information on exactly what band/flavor of radio they used for comms between the capsule and the recovery ship (e.g., VHF/UHF FM/DMR, etc). Would it be smart to have VHF Marine? Yes. Do they? No idea. It did seem to me that comms from dragon were being relayed by the recovery ship (via INMARSAT - a guess since Iridium is fairly low data rate) to the SpaceX teams in California and at KSC - and again, just my opinion, it seemed like the comms had the audio quality of DMR.
as a side note..... we can't even really figure out how the two different SpaceX DMR systems are utilized... they have both a UHF and a 900 MHz DMR CAP+ system here at KSC.....
my opinion is that the old shuttle UHF freqs are not used in any way by SpaceX. That doesn't mean that Boeing doesn't / won't use them for Starliner...again, no idea.
I do have a gut feeling that there won't be 20 private boats surrounding the recovery ship next time.....
this image was posted in the FL Scanner FB group. I do not vouch for it's accuracy.
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doug