CRCSS Satellite and S-Band Ground Station
FedSat Satellite
FedSat
was an Australian scientific microsatellite, with dimensions of 50 x 50 x 70cm and
weighing approximately 58 kg.
Its purposes were to:
- Establish Australian capability in microsatellite technologies
- Help develop expertise necessary for sustaining those industries
- Test and develop Australian-developed intellectual property
- Provide a research platform for Australian space-science, communication and GPS studies.
FedSat was under the control of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Satellite Systems, which combined the resources and skills of 12 Australian organisations.
Contributions from each of the partner organisations were doubled by the Commonwealth
Government, under its Commonwealth Government's Cooperative Research Centre's
Program. The total budget of the Centre was approximately $60 million over 7
years, with $20 million of that allocated for the FedSat mission.
CRCs are a means of encouraging Australian industry by targeting research into
fields attractive to industry. Like all CRCs, the CRCSS included government
research agencies, universities, and private companies.
The satellite orbited in a low earth orbit (LEO) approximately 800km above the Earth. Passes over the ground station lasted on average around 12 minutes.
FedSat featured six payloads, three of which were fully developed by the CRCSS. The payloads included a magnetometer, a Ka band payload and a high performance computing payload. The satellite also featured a sun sensor, which enabled it to be sun-synchronized with respect to directional control.
FedSat papers for more information
S-Band Ground Station
The CRCSS S-Band Ground Station provided telemetry tracking and control (TT&C) services to FedSat. The Ground Station was, and still is, located in ITR at the Mawson Lakes campus of the University of South Australia in Adelaide. This Ground Station also provided secondary TT&C for CHIPSat. For a summary of the Ground Station you can read a paper (PDF, 508KB) given at the Australian International Aerospace Congress in 2003.
Commands were sent to the satellite on a regular basis by the ground station control operators. These commands dictated the activation of payloads, and also served to maintain the functionality of the satellite. The satellite responded to queries and provided a different telemetry response for each. The data transmitted between the ground station and the satellite during a pass was observed during a live pass or in the pass archive. The live pass and pass archive pages also offered FedSat staff and the general public the ability to observe other aspects of telemetry and ground station status.