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Several architecture options are possible; (1) either only own ground station (possibly enhanced with ground stations at partner universities and organizations), (2) use of commercial stations or (3) a combination of (1)&(2).
(1): Local university ground stations
At the time of writing, our own ground station is currently not near meeting our requirements wrt. S-band capabilities. The VHF/UHF TM/TC-part is also not fully operational. However, funding for a heavy upgrade looks very promising. We should know this month, I think. The ground station hardware/software could, depending on cost/schedule/options be based upon GS hardware/software from the satellite supplier or set up our own general equipment (or both). An example of a typical ground station can be found here: https://www.isispace.nl/product/full-ground-station-kit-s-band/. Generally, the ground station will consist of antennas (dish for S-band, Yagi for VHF/UHF), amplifiers and switches as well as a radio supported by operation software.
A general, versatile ground station based on the use of SDR and GNURadio are being set up at by the university radio club. An upgraded version of the HAM-station (VHF/UHF) for the student satellite project is on-going and planned to be finished by end of '17.
Partners such as • Partners: Porto, Vigo and also other universities can be potential supporter supporters and help with data acquisition. However, cost and time to build ground stations must be considered (that is why I think we should approach professional operators to have at least a fall-back). We should be able to supply a hardware design for a versatile ground station (one version of it is currently being set up at the local radio club ARK) as well as our own; but the . They should set up their own ground stations of similar capabilities compared to ours. The partners must endure the time and cost to implement it.•
Access to NASAs huge large antennas could be very interesting, especially if things does not work out as it should, and also if we are able to set . This can also be of interest wrt. setting up more advanced experiments based on the SDR-payload in next steps.
Example:
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Setting up own ground stations also has a value by increasing the competence of the organization. In addition, these stations can be used by other missions and might also be included in global ground station networks such as SATNogs when they are not used by the project.
(2): Commercial stations
The use of for example the KSAT Lite should be considered. This will be a solution requiring a cost during operations. However, it can be vise to have a backup communication architecture available if the local ground stations cannot be used for some reason.
Another option to explore is to partner with Statsat and gain access to Kystverkets station in Vardø. This will also have a cost for the operation.
Both KSAT and Statsat are Norwegian companies and might be preferred for this reason. There are also other companies such as Leaf Space https://leaf.space/leaf-line/ providing ground station services for small satellite missions.
Cost and possibilities for all options must be clarified in the next project phase.
(3): Combination
Operations software
• Again, I think we must know what we have to play with from the satellite supplier wrt. implementing our own software on-top/instead of. Then we can sit down and see if software/toolchains from our partners can/should be used or not.
• I’ve initiated discussions with Statsat; a company affiliated with the space centre and Space Norway. They are doing operations of the AIS-satellites and NORSat satellites. They now have four satellites operational, and a staff of only four-five people doing everything. They are in the process of re-writing their software based on the 5-6 years of experience they now have, in order to further simplify and stream-line operations. They are delivering an operational service for Kystverket, in addition to more ad-hoc support to research teams with other payloads on the NORSats. I’ve invited them and Space Norway to Trondheim in November/December.
• Also KSAT can be approached on this. We will also approach them when other activities are cleared of the list. We have a lot of people we know very well in KSAT at the moment.
I hope this helps clarify my thoughts, and that it can be used as basis for discussions. Please let me know if you think any of this does not make sense.
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