Santa Maria joined Estrack in January 2008 to track launchers lifting off from ESA's Spaceport in Kourou, initially supporting the ATV launches on Ariane 5. Stations can also support radio science, in which signals transmitted from a spacecraft through the atmosphere of another body in the Solar System can be analysed to study the atmosphere's properties. Six Estrack stations are equipped with GPS (global positioning satellite) receivers and are connected to ESA's sophisticated Navigation Facility at ESOC, while the three DSA stations can conduct extremely accurate delta-DOR (delta-Differential One-way Range) spacecraft tracking campaigns, the most precise technique now in use for locating spacecraft in deep space. In August 2016, New Norcia station received signals from the international Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn, across more than 1.4 billion km of space.ĭata rates vary greatly depending on the mission, direction (uplink or downlink), distance and other factors, but typically range from 256 Kbit/s (kilobits per second) to 8 Mbit/s (megabits per second). These feature some of the world’s best tracking station technology and enable communications with spacecraft voyaging hundreds of millions of kilometres in space. In the 2000s, the first of three 35 m-diameter Deep Space Antennas (DSA) was built in New Norcia (Australia), followed by stations at Cebreros (Spain) and Malargüe (Argentina). The aim was to establish three terrestrial stations about 120° apart in longitude to provide continuous coverage as Earth rotated. In 1998, ESA decided to establish its own network for tracking deep-space probes to cope with the expected rapid rise in the number of interplanetary missions. In 2017, responsibility for Maspalomas and Villafranca stations, both in Spain, was transferred to European industry. In December 2015, Perth station was retired from service and its core spacecraft-acquisition functionality was taken over by a new 4.5-metre antenna located at New Norcia. The core network comprises seven stations four of these are used for tracking satellite or launchers near Earth and feature 13-, 13.5- or 15-metre dish antennas: Kourou (French Guiana), Redu (Belgium), Santa Maria (Portugal) and Kiruna (Sweden). Estrack core network ESA ground station network
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