In September, INTA carried out the successful validation of VIL-2 (15m Earth Station for TTC in S-Band), which was thus incorporated into the INTA Network of Tracking, Telemetry and Command Stations of satellites in orbits close to Earth.

VILLAFRANCA-2 (VIL2) STATION

In this post we present the Network of TTC Stations (telemetry, tracking and command) of INTA. This network consists of 4 earth stations distributed in two Space Centers:

• 11.3m Torrejón-1 (TRN1) and 15m Villafranca-1 y 2 (VIL1&2). Although the latter are located within the ESA facilities in Villafranca del Castillo (ESAC), they all belong to the INTA Torrejón Space Center (CEIT)
• 15m Maspalomas-1 (MSP1), for S&X Band TTC, in INTA Canary Island Space Center (CEC)

INTA´S SPACE CENTERS AND GS

Using this GS, INTA provides TTC services to ESA missions (CHEOPS, CLUSTER 1,2,3&4; XMM, INTEGRAL), EUMETSAT (METOP A,B&C), as well as Spanish Earth Observation Missions: PAZ and INGENIO (the latter scheduled to be launched in 2020).

INTA's TTC clients and missions

In order to get all the functionality, INTA has developed and installed auxiliary systems:

•  PLANNER multimission-multiestation to plan passes from diferetn missions in all the GS (groun stations) of the system..

PLANNER

• N&C (Network&Comms) based on communication lines with hot redundancy and geographical diversification between the antennas and the Satellite Control Centers of ESA missions located in ESOC (European Space Operation Center).

N&C ARCHITECTURE

• M&C (Monitoring&Control) in charge of monitoring all network and operation systems, allowing a fast response in case of incidents.

M&C PRTG

• VOICE-LOOP supporting 24h voice communications between GS and Satellite Control Centers.

For the incorporation of VIL-2 to the Stations Network, a control system has been developed in cluster with VIL-1, allowing to have a single system for the operation of the two antennas sharing the Baseband equipment of Telemetry and Telecommand. In this way it's acheved a  hot redundancy of these antennas during the passes of the most critical missions.

CSMC CLUSTER VIL1&2

In future articles we will provide more details of the different INTA Ground Stations and missions to which we provide TTC services, such as the future monitoring of the return to Earth of the Chinese Lunar mission GHANG'E-5, in 2020 from MSP-1 or the participation of TRN-1 in the CHEOPS and INGENIO launches.

Iván Lora