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ESTRACK Facilities
The European Space Tracking (ESTRACK) network consists of a number of ground-based space-tracking stations belonging to the European Space Agency (ESA), and operated by the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The stations support various ESA spacecraft and facilitate communications between ground operators and scientific probes such as XMM-Newton, Mars Express, BepiColombo, Gaia. Similar networks are run by the USA, China, Russia, Japan, and India. Composition The Core ESTRACK network is composed of seven ESA-owned ground stations and the ESTRACK Control Centre in the ESOC. Four of the stations are used for tracking satellites and launchers near Earth and three are used for tracking deep-space probes. Service contracts with commercially operated ground stations and cooperation agreements with international partners allows the network to track satellites that aren't in view of the ESA owned ground stations. ESA stations Core Ground Stations * Kourou S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Space Agency
, owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (12052189474).jpg , size = , caption = , acronym = , established = , employees = 2,200 , administrator = Director General Josef Aschbacher , budget = €7.2 billion (2022) , language = English and French (working languages) , website = , logo = European Space Agency logo.svg , logo_caption = Logo , image_caption = European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) Main Control Room The European Space Agency (ESA; french: Agence spatiale européenne , it, Agenzia Spaziale Europea, es, Agencia Espacial Europea ASE; german: Europäische Weltraumorganisation) is an intergovernmental organisation of 22 member states dedicated to the exploration of space. Established in 1975 and headquartered i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiruna Station
Kiruna Station is an ESTRACK radio antenna station for communication with spacecraft operated by the Swedish Space Corporation. It is located 38 km east of Kiruna, Sweden. The site hosts one 15 metre- and one 13-metre-diameter antenna, each with S- and X-band reception and S-band transmission. It also hosts a GPS-Tracking and Data Facility (TDF) antenna. It is mainly used for the ERS-2, Envisat, and ASTRO-F missions. See also * Esrange Space Center Esrange Space Center (short form Esrange) is a rocket range and research centre located about 40 kilometers east of the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is a base for scientific research with high-altitude balloons, investigation of the au ... External links Kiruna station pageESA webpage on ESTRACK, including links to all stations References European Space Agency ESTRACK facilities Kiruna Buildings and structures in Norrbotten County {{space-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory
The Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) is a radio astronomy observatory, located in a natural bowl of hills at Hartebeesthoek just south of the Magaliesberg mountain range, Gauteng, South Africa, about 50 km west of Johannesburg. It is a National Research Facility run by South Africa's National Research Foundation. HartRAO was the only major radio astronomy observatory in Africa until the construction of the KAT-7 test bed for the future MeerKAT array. History The observatory was originally named Deep Space Station 51 (DSS51) and was built in 1961 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In this role the station assisted in tracking many unmanned United States space missions, including the Ranger, Surveyor and Lunar Orbiter spacecraft (which landed on the Moon or mapped it from orbit), the Mariner missions (which explored the planets Venus and Mars) and the Pioneer missions (which measured the Sun's winds). The first Mars surface imag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Esrange Space Center
Esrange Space Center (short form Esrange) is a rocket range and research centre located about 40 kilometers east of the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is a base for scientific research with high-altitude balloons, investigation of the aurora borealis, sounding rocket launches, and satellite tracking, among other things. Located 200 km north of the Arctic Circle and surrounded by a vast wilderness, its geographic location is ideal for many of these purposes. Esrange was built in 1964 by ESRO, the ''European Space Research Organisation'', which later became European Space Agency by merging with ELDO, the European Launcher Development Organisation. The first rocket launch from Esrange occurred on 19 November 1966. In 1972, ownership was transferred to the newly started Swedish Space Corporation. History In the 1960s Esrange was established as an ESRO sounding rocket launching range located in Kiruna (Sweden). This location was chosen because it was generally agreed tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex
The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex (GDSCC), commonly called the Goldstone Observatory, is a satellite ground station located in Fort Irwin in the U.S. state of California. Operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), its main purpose is to track and communicate with interplanetary space missions. It is named after Goldstone, California, a nearby gold-mining ghost town. The station is one of three satellite communication stations in the NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program’s Deep Space Network (DSN), whose mission is to provide the vital two-way communications link that tracks and controls interplanetary spacecraft and receives the images and scientific information they collect. The others are the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in Spain and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia. These three stations are located at separations of approximately 120° longitude so that as the Earth rotates a spacecraft wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poker Flat Research Range
The Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR) is a launch facility and rocket range for sounding rockets in the U.S. state of Alaska, located on a site at Chatanika, about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Fairbanks and 1.5 degrees south of the Arctic Circle. More than 1,700 launches have been conducted at the range to study the Earth's atmosphere and the interaction between the atmosphere and the space environment. Areas studied at PFRR include the aurora, plasma physics, the ozone layer, solar proton events, Earth's magnetic field, and ultraviolet radiation. Rockets launched at PFRR have attained an apogee of . PFRR is owned by the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Geophysical Institute, the only such owned by a university in the world, and is operated under contract to the NASA Wallops Flight Facility. Other users include the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the Air Force Geophysics Lab (AFGL), and various universities and research laboratories. Since its founding ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dongara Satellite Station
Yatharagga is an area associated with a homestead in the mid west of Western Australia (WA) near Yarragadee Station. It is located about north-west of Mingenew and about south-east of Geraldton. The area is also associated with two Australian Earth stations with space related tracking systems at the West Australian Space Centre. Homestead The Yatharagga is a ''homestead'' listed by the Gazetteer of Australia. Yatharagga Satellite Station ''Yatharagga Satellite Station'' also known as ''West Australian Space Centre'' is owned and run by the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC)'s subsidiary SSC Space Australia, and services a number of government agencies and commercial organisations. It commenced operations under SSC in 2012. MOBLAS 5 Satellite Laser Ranging Station Near the homestead is a facility ''MOBLAS 5 Satellite Laser Ranging'' (SLR) station originally established by an agreement between the United States of America and Australia effective 27 June 1978 to establish a NAS ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svalbard Satellite Station
Svalbard Satellite Station ( no, Svalbard satellittstasjon) or SvalSat is a satellite ground station located on Platåberget near Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Opened in 1997, it is operated by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), a joint venture between Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC). SvalSat and KSAT's Troll Satellite Station (TrollSat) in Antarctica are the only ground stations that can see a low altitude polar orbiting satellite (e.g., in sun-synchronous orbit) on every revolution as the earth rotates. As of December 2019 the facility consists of almost 100 multi-mission and customer-dedicated antennas which operate in the C, L, S, X and K bands. The station provides ground services to more satellites than any other facility in the world. Customers with their own installations include the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Troll Satellite Station
Troll Satellite Station ( no, Troll satellittstasjon), commonly abbreviated TrollSat, is a satellite ground station located at Troll in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. The earth station is owned by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), a joint venture between the Kongsberg Group and the Norwegian Space Center. The radomes are located on top of Jutulsessen, a nunatak area next to the research station at Troll. The research station is operated by the Norwegian Polar Institute, which also maintains the earth station. TrollSat started operations on 1 March 2007 and was officially opened on 20 January 2008. The earth station serves low Earth orbit satellites and consists of a antenna capable of S band and X band reception. Information is relayed using a and a C band uplink. Operations control is carried out by KSAT in Tromsø, Norway. Satellites using TrollSat include Radarsat, GeoEye, WorldView, Galileo and CHEOPS. The system is coordinated with Svalbard Satellite Station (SvalSat) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Point Air Force Station
Morse Field is a former military airfield located approximately south-southwest of Naālehu, Hawaii. It was also known as South Cape Airport, South Point Air Force Station, or Ka Lae Military Reservation. It is now abandoned. History The facility was located at Ka Lae, the southernmost point on the island of Hawaii and consisted of of land owned in fee simple plus utility easements covering of land. Morse Field In 1941 construction was underway on five buildings, runways, and access roads at Morse Field. Activities were centralized at this airport inasmuch as its location shortened by approximately , from a routing through Oahu, the transpacific air ferry route to Australia and the Philippines. Construction work, originally under the Zone Constructing Quartermaster, was transferred to the District Engineer in late 1940. A total of $1,534,793 was requested from the War Department in May for completion of the project; this amount later increased to $2,020,000. The work on the Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malargüe Station
Malargüe Station (also known as DSA 3 or Deep Space Antenna 3) is a 35-metre ESTRACK radio antenna in Argentina. It enables the European Space Agency (ESA) to communicate with spacecraft in deep space. It is located south of the town of Malargüe, Argentina. The Malargüe antenna has two sister stations, Cebreros Station, near Madrid, Spain, and New Norcia Station near New Norcia, Western Australia. The completion of this station allows ESTRACK to track deep space missions continuously. On 7 December 2011, the station's 35 m-diameter dish antenna was hoisted into place. The operation took several hours and had to wait for a calm day with no wind. The station underwent tests in 2012 and was fully operational in 2013. Malargüe Station was one of the stations providing communications, tracking and data download from the Rosetta spacecraft ''Rosetta'' was a space probe built by the European Space Agency launched on 2 March 2004. Along with ''Philae'', its lander module, ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Norcia Station
New Norcia Station (also known as NNO) is an ESTRACK Earth station in Australia for communication with spacecraft after launch, in low earth orbit, in geostationary orbit and in deep space. It is located south of the town of New Norcia, Western Australia. It was the first ESA deep space ground station, followed by Cebreros Station and Malargüe Station. The station operates a 35-meter dish designated NNO-1 capable of two-way transmission in both S- and X-bands using 2 and 20-kilowatt transmitters. The antenna weighs over 600 tonnes and is 40 metres tall. Future upgrade plans include adding a Ka-band station to support international missions. Construction began in April 2000 and lasted until the end of the first half of 2002. Installation of electronics and communication equipment followed. The station was officially opened on 5 March 2003 by the Premier of Western Australia at the time, Dr Geoff Gallop. Total construction cost was . A new 4.5-metre dish designated NNO-2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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