We have been awarded more than £1M from EPSRC, with another £0.5M match funding from school, to establish an experimental satellite ground station facility (SGSF).
SGSF is hosted on Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh campus.
SGSF will provide currently unavailable capabilities and accelerate research in space technologies and will flexibly support the needs of broad research communities developing e.g. mm-wave and optical communications technologies; quantum communications; non-terrestrial and terrestrial network integration, as well as; astronomical instrumentation and data collection. SGSF will also catalyse industry academia interactions, synergising with urgent needs to validate emerging technologies on tracking antennas, optical/quantum comms, spaceborne lidar calibration and pilot satellite missions.
Capabilities:
- 4 mechanically tracking pedestals
- Frequency ranges: VHF, UHF, L-, S-, Ku-, Ka-bands
- 7 degree of freedom motion platform
- Tracking software based on orbital information (open loop)
- Software defined radio receivers up to 5GSps
- 2 x workspaces and 1 x storage space
For more information, please refer to the Space Academy (https://space.site.hw.ac.uk/), and contact the project lead: Prof. George Goussetis.
