Research and educational network of ground stations for receiving and processing information from educational satellites

Abstract

The research and educational network of ground stations for receiving and processing information from low-orbit educational spacecraft is considered in this paper. Ground stations are equipped with an orbit measurement and determination system with time synchronization. This network realizes receiving and processing telemetry of ultra-small satellites, performing measurements and determining their orbital parameters and teaching students of aerospace specialties. Software and hardware of stationary and mobile ground stations are considered. The ground station was tested in the modes of receiving data and measuring the ultra-small satellite orbit with different frequency of telemetry packets. The initial orbit determination by frequency and time measurements of a LUOЛA-1 01 nanosatellite telemetry signal on several orbits with a limited number of data on one pass was studied. The nanosatellite radio signal nominal frequency and initial orbital parameters were unknown. Close orbit determination using a ground station network for satellite constellation launch in the first week of flight was considered. The simulation results showed that if the mean anomalies of neighbouring satellites differ by 0.1o, the spacecraft can be identified in the constellation by the frequency and time measurements of the same radio signal at three synchronized ground stations.