I've recently gotten into HAM radio and gotten my technician HAM license. KM7IKT btw in case you were wondering. In getting into this hobby I have found tons of new stuff to try out to expand my knowledge of radios. There is a never ending to do list of things to try in HAM radio that will never get boring. One of those is receiving images from the International Space Station. To do this you only need a cheap $25 Baofeng radio or an SDR, pretty much anything you have that can tune to 437.550 MHz will be more than capable of picking up the signals.

What is SSTV?

SSTV stands for Slow Scan Television, which is a way of sending images via a radio, basically you hear what sounds like modem tones going over your radio, and you use a decoder set to robot36 to decode the images being sent down. It's more simple than it sounds, what all that means is set your radio to listen on 437.550 MHz and have your phone close by with a decoder app. There's tons available for iOS and android, and they all work about the same.

How I was able to pick up SSTV and decode it

Tonight I found the ISS was going to pass over me at 4:37pm MST, so I took out my radio, setup my Mag Mount antenna, and had a voice memo going on my phone. What I got the first pass was only about 1 second of SSTV, and a whole bunch of garbage.
So I looked at my setup, and tried to figure out where I went wrong. Turns out, the name "Mag Mount antenna" actually means something, and me putting it in a field of dirt was not helping me. Then I found that hiding out behind my metal office wasn't a great idea either given the direction I would be hearing the ISS. So I took my setup to a new spot, set the mag mount antenna on the car, and got ready. To account for Dopler shift overhead I programmed 437.550, 437.560, and 437.570 MHz and would change channels every 3 minutes. With that setup I was able to tune in and hear a full SSTV image.

Conclusion:

Basicall, SSTV is super cool, and you should definitely try it out, it's not that hard, and anybody can do it. All you need is a cheap radio or SDR to get started.