SSTL assists RapidEye ground station upgrade
9 October 2012
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) is
undertaking a project to assist geospatial
information provider RapidEye AG in upgrading and
consolidating its ground station facilities.
Engineers from SSTL’s Ground Systems Group are
providing a new and upgraded Spacecraft Control
Centre for RapidEye’s headquarters in Brandenburg,
Germany and relocating its Tracking, Telemetry and
Command (TT&C) ground station equipment to the
Kongsberg Satellite Services AS (KSAT) facility in
Svalbard, Norway, which receives Earth Observation
data from its constellation of five satellites.
As part of the project, SSTL’s Ground Systems Group
will also provide new ground station equipment, to
incorporate tracking, telemetry and command and
S-band data recovery to the existing X-Band SG-9
antenna system currently used at the KSAT facilities
in Svalbard.
The current Spacecraft Control Centre in
Brandenburg, Germany, was built by SSTL in 2006 as
part of the 5-spacecraft RapidEye constellation
mission. The improved Centre will allow RapidEye to
continue command and control of their constellation
remotely from Germany, while retaining back-up TT&C
services through the ground station facilities at
SSTL in Guildford, UK.
