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Ground station requirements

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9:15 am
November 14, 2009

Luke Maurits

Adelaide, Australia

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posts 396

I don't know very much about radio technology at all (although I'm hoping I'll get to learn something through involvement in this project!), so perhaps my fears are misplaced: right now my main concern is what the antenna requirements will be for ground stations involved in communicating with the spacecraft. There seems to be no practical way for us to afford the gigantic dish installations that were involved in the Apollo missions. Are these strictly necessary? Would the ground station antenna requirements be lessened by relaying signals through an Earth orbiting satellite? Could we buy time on a commercial satellite for this purpose for less than the cost of building/renting a dish?

Main workgroup: Navigation and Guidance. Side interests: Propulsion, Computer Systems, Communications. Skill set: Mathematics major, good knowledge of Newtonian physics, decent programming (Python, C, Java, PHP)

10:11 am
November 14, 2009

brmj

Rochester, New York, United States

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posts 136

I think radio technology has advanced considerably since the '60s and '70s, and the ground stations probably ought to be within the reach of a substantial fractionof radio hams. After all, amature radio enthusiests have been able to recieve data from Voyager 1, and it is much, much fartur away than the moon.

In any case, some of the Project Argus people may be willing to help out. Some of them operate dishes larger than the primary ones NASA used for the Apollo program, and it's not unusual for them to pick up fairly good signals from interplanitary probes.

Main work groups: Propulsion (booster), Spacecraft Engineering, Computer Systems, Navigation and Guidance (software)

3:07 am
December 14, 2009

squid

Member

posts 6

Post edited 3:10 am – December 14, 2009 by squid

some universities would also have access to reasonable antenna arrays and equipment, so if we can get some of those involved then we may be able to use their equipment, at least temporarily.

the main problem is that we can't have a single station on earth unless you can somehow get the spaceship to launch and maintain a geostationary orbit (or close to it) all the way to the moon.

having a satellite relay would be prohibitly expensive, and again we would need at least 3 geostationary satellites to maintain full coverage.

3:20 am
December 14, 2009

Luke Maurits

Adelaide, Australia

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posts 396

Post edited 3:37 am – December 14, 2009 by Luke Maurits

squid said:

the main problem is that we can't have a single station on earth unless you can somehow get the spaceship to launch and maintain a geostationary orbit (or close to it) all the way to the moon.

Unfortunately, this would be impossible. The trip to the moon takes about 3 days with realistic propulsion abilities and is pretty much a straight line (if you look around the Navigation and Guidance Workgroup forums you can find some rough simulated trajectories). It will definitely be necessary to have stations on opposite sides of the globe. Hopefully by the time we are actually thinking about launching, we will have enough awareness and support that this can happen.

EDIT: Here's a link to those simulted trajectories.

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