Preparation and Validation of Defence Research and Development Canada's (DRDC) Microsatellite Ground Station

摘要

Budgets for traditional "big" space mission are generally higher in comparison to those of "microspace" missions. Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) used the Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite (M3MSat) project [4, 7], a Canadian maritime surveillance satellite, to apply this low cost microspace approach [3] when building the primary Ground Station (GS). DRDC prepared a GS that will operate the microsatellite with a small operations team. Key to DRDC's implementation of the GS was satellite control automation to conduct operations with M3MSat. This paper will document how DRDC designed, implemented, built, and validated their Mission Operations Centre (MOC) and GS as well as the training of their operators.