GROUNDSTATION – SpaceLab UFSC

Ground station, our operation centre.

community
spacelab receives essential support from the amateur radio community

The amateur radio community is essential to help receiving telemetry from small satellites transmissions. With the community help, and with the already installed structure at UFSC, it is possible to provide support for the missions operation.

Without our partner ARAF (Associação dos Radioamadores de Florinanópolis in Portuguese) missions like FloripaSat-1 would not be possible. Their support in tests and during the mission operation are fundamental for the success.

Radio knowledge and expertise is fundamental for successful missions in SpaceLab. If you have some experience with radio communication, participates in a group of amateur radio or want to learn more about this field, please get in touch by clicking here.

SpaceLab participates and supports amateur radio events in Florianópolis. Click here to go to our news page and look for the next amateur radio event.

know the spacelab ground station

our ground station

The Ground Segment consists of all ground-based elements of our lab. It includes our Ground Station and the operations center. The Ground Station is the radio station for the communication with the satellites. It can send/receive communications in the VHF and UHF bands. It consists of antennas, one server and screens for visualization.

 

Further improvements are planned to automate the system, provide external access and keep uninterruptedly monitoring CubeSat missions. More information soon!

our software

In order to ease the receptions, transmissions, encoding and decoding of the SpaceLab missions. The group developed an application that perform from the low level tasks, using a Software Defined Radio (SDR) device, to the graphical interface. The software was designed to attend the core system of FloripaSat missions and it was validated after the launch of FloripaSat-I. The application is available in the laboratory GitHub repository and it is open source (under certain restrictions).

©2023 SpaceLab UFSC – Space Technology Research Laboratory of the Federal University of Santa Catarina