The National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) has chosen Alén Space as the supplier of its new ground station at the Canary Islands Space Center (CEC) in Maspalomas. Its mission will be to follow up on the future ANSER (Advanced Nanosatellites Systems for Earth Observation Research) mission, in which both entities had previously collaborated.
This reinforcement is part of the ANSER project, an Earth observation mission, which foresees the launch into orbit of a group of three nanosatellites to monitor the quality of water in Spanish reservoirs and swamps, as well as study global warming caused by the increase of greenhouse gases and solar radiation. A few months ago, the Alén Space team supervised the development of the Inter-satellite Link (ISL) system to allow direct communication between satellites with a range of about 100 kilometers for the ANSER mission. This new ground station is scheduled to be delivered in Maspalomas this April with a warranty period of two years.
INTA has selected Alén as the most reliable option to provide a complete ground station that can operate in the 400MHz UHF band, including a Yagi antenna, an integrated radio that can capture UHF data, and two radio signal amplifiers. The company will supply INTA with its comprehensive GS-Kit solution, a package that includes everything necessary for tracking satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The GS-Kit provides the structure, a rack line with a dual Software Defined Radio (SDR) solution compatible with GNU Radio and ground station control software. For this reason, INTA ensures the tracking, telemetry and telecommand (TTC) capabilities of the ANSER mission, with a new ground station at the Maspalomas CEC that will increase the coverage of satellite passes in their orbit around the Earth. .