Together with partners German Aerospace Center (DLR), Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace and Airbus Defence and Space, KSAT will analyze optimized downlink scenarios for future European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Observation (EO) missions to determine an efficient use of ground station resources.
The study goal is to refine the future dataflow ground architecture for ESA EO satellites and deliver a roadmap for its adaptation in the timeframe 2027-2035.
ESA is planning to significantly increase the number of operational EO satellites in the coming years, with the launch of the Copernicus Expansion Missions and the Sentinel Next-Generation Satellites. The evolving landscape of ESA Earth Observation will bring a substantial increase to data volume and higher data rate requirements.
The general trend toward higher data rates and higher downlink frequencies for ESA institutional EO satellites requires the use of novel protocols to improve the robustness and resiliency of the LEO to Earth communication. In particular, the impact of using communication protocols such as the CCSDS File Delivery Protocol CFDP Class 2 on the ground segment will be assessed in the context of forthcoming fully based Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN)-network architectures.
KSAT is currently a core provider of data acquisition and TT&C services for the European Space Agency’s Earth Observation Missions.
KSAT owns and operates a ground station network of polar and mid-latitude stations. The four polar ground stations are uniquely located in Tromsø at 69°N, Svalbard Satellite Station (SvalSat) at 78°N Inuvik Station at 68°N and the Antarctic station (TrollSat) at 72°S. The network consists of more than 270 antennas located at 26 sites world-wide.