DRDC-RDDC-2015-N043 September 2015

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

Captain Ian Mok Defence R&D Canada Ottawa, 3701 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0Z4 [email protected]

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.

I. INTRODUCTION staff, while maintaining a readiness for satellite operations, while retrofitting the aging GS. In preparation for the operation of a new microsatellite, M3MSat, DRDC stepped away from the II. BACKGROUND traditional big-space philosophy and applied the micro space approach when developing their GS and Mission One of the greater challenges that was tackled was MOC The satellite will carry an Automatic the number of operators available to support this Identification System (AIS) [2] payload in Low Earth mission. While the operational team consisted of six Orbit (LEO) and DRDC, with a 4.6m and 9.1m antenna, people for this mission, four of those were military was to host the primary GS. personnel. Military personnel are generally posted into new positions every few years and, during the lifetime M3MSat is a microsatellite whose primary mission of M3MSat DRDC would’ve experienced 100% is to demonstrate the use of Automatic Identification turnover rate of the military staff during the satellite System (AIS) signals from marine vessels in space. operations phase. Any handover process, however Com Dev International [8], a designer and manufacturer comprehensive it may be, is hard to replace the hours of of space hardware, was contracted to build the satellite. hands-on time and training done by the original As per the contract, they were to build the operators on the console with the Flatsat led by Com microsatellite, secure a launch into LEO, train the Dev, the company who was contracted to build the DRDC satellite operations team, and deliver a flatsat to. satellite. So the handover process was flagged as a The flatsat is a ‘spare’ satellite kept on the ground point of focus for incoming replacements when scoping consisting of flight and engineering model components our training requirements. This drove the heavy for testing, training, and troubleshooting. Aside from emphasis on the documentation of our work, lessons risk reduction for integrating and testing, the flatsat also learned, trouble shooting, observed issues, etc. yet it had provides a great source for hands on training, as will be to be generic enough to accommodate the technical discussed further on. The project consists of multiple background of the incoming personnel. Much effort phases from the preliminary Requests for Proposals was put into the recruitment of CAF personnel with (RPF) to Operational Readiness Review (ORR) and satellite communication experience and through Royal throughout each milestone, a Mission Review Board Military College (RMC)’s exchange program with (MRB), consisting of project managers from the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), as well as Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and DRDC, gives the their own internal GS for high altitude balloon trials final word of proceeding to the next phase of the with radiation detection payloads, and alumni of the project. International Space University (ISU), DRDC was able to put together a diverse team. Even so, the Although the M3MSat launch is slated for 2015, for documentation that was created included very clear this paper we’ll still be able to focus on the steps DRDC step-by-step instructions. took, with the help of CSA, to address the manning, validation of the ground segment, and training of DRDC

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scheme the order and direction of flow can be followed Payload Data Exfiltration in Figure 2. Note that, unlike Figure 3, the users in The AIS data aboard the satellite needs to be Figure 2 are blue indicating that their input is not downlinked to our GS as frequently as possible to required and that the process is continuous prevent the memory onboard to fill up, as well as to autonomously. ensure the science users can get the latest AIS data that they requested in CSIAPS. The payload tasking RF commands generated in the MPS include commands to The Antenna Control System (ACS) is a program M3MSat to downlink the scientific data back to the GS written in Agilent VEE to control the IF/RF switching, during a satellite pass. Once it is received on the down converters, up converters, and power amplifiers. ground, it’s then automatically routed away from the GS This program also reads from the pointing file. Each and MOC to our science labs and the science users. satellite of interest has their polarization, uplink and downlink frequencies stored within a satellite database inside the program so when a satellite enters line of sight, it will set the correct polarizations and frequencies IV. VALIDATION for the GS to communicate with the satellite on their respective equipment. Tracking and Testing Tracking validation was accomplished using several Payload Tasking and Satellite Commands methods. Aside from regular calibration, major motor and software retrofits were performed in 2013 on the

Raw & Proc’d Mission 13 P/L Data Products User 9.1m S-band and 4.6m C-band antennas to achieve finer 1 pointing accuracies. To validate the accuracy of our Payload Ops Center DRDC MOC DRDC Ground Station antennas two methods of calibration were used: CSIAPS DM ITOS T3 9m ANT User Reqmt

Sensor peaking the dishes onto the sun and other relatively TM 2 Commands 5 6 TM 7 TC 4 TC AIS Task stationary objects such as GPS satellites and tracking Report Payload Tasking MON MPS Special Instructions TRK PNT actual Low Earth Orbit satellites. By peaking on 3 ACS TT&C Station stationary objects it was possible to compare our Operator 8 Storage Device antenna’s Az/El reading from the motors to a set of M3MSat 12 T3 PNT Outages TRK STC Az/El generated off the object’s Two Line Element MON

P/L Data P/L Data FD (STK) APS Reports HSDL 4m ANT (TLE) orbital data. Since M3MSat will be in low earth GSA

Contact Times 10 IF 11 9 orbit, LEO satellites known to transmit at S-band, such as Radarsat 1 and 2 [1], SCISat and, more recently, Raw P/L Data NEOSSat were used to continue the tests. These

satellites were tracked and the signals peaked on by

applying offsets in the tracking software. Algorithms to Figure 3: Data Path during Payload Tasking compensate for atmospheric refractions were

implemented on the tracking software. C-band LEOs The users of the scientific data are able to task were more scarce and DRDC approached exact Earth M3MSat’s payload. Using the Commercial Satellite for support. Exact Earth, a global maritime traffic data Imagery Acquisition Planning System (CSIAPS) [6] provider has an interest in the AIS data is planned to GUI , a tool to plan the AIS payload data acquisition receive this data off M3MSat and they had assisted us in opportunities, they’re able to select areas on the globe the validation work of our GS, which included our from which they want to gather AIS data. From the antenna tests. By allowing time on their satellite, exact mission planning side the Mission Planning System View 1 (eV-1) for these trials, they scheduled their eV-1 (MPS) translates these requests into macro-commands microsatellite to downlink their AIS payload data to our that give the AIS antenna and receiver activation times. GS via C-band for us to confirm our tracking accuracy Note that CSIAPS and the MPS are both physically on the 4.6m antenna. Again, the signal peaks were separated from the GS. The MPS automatically pushes taken and the antenna pointing offset angles logged, and these macro-commands to the GS at which point an good signal levels were received, validating our 4.6m operator is required to convert these macro-commands tracking after antenna retrofit. into spacecraft commands via a tool in the Integrated

Test and Operations System (ITOS), or the operator’s To see the improvement in tracking performance console to control the satellite. There are two users in after the antenna retrofit figure 4 compares a LEO Figure 3: the data user making their initial data request, satellite that was tracked in February of 2011 and the and the MOC operator who would push the satellite results of signal strength to elevation angle that was payload taskings. taken. Figure 5 shows the same antenna tracking a LEO

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satellite in January 2014, after the antenna retrofit. It can be seen that prior to the upgrade the 9.1m antenna was having troubles with passes starting as low as 20 degrees while the readings in 2014 showed much less signs of degradation even up to 40 degrees. Although the improvement is not shown, the results of the exact View 1 trial verified the 4.6m antenna tracking accuracies met the requirements of the retrofit contract and M3MSat mission.

After the M3MSat mission ends there may be future plans for the GS antennas to track multiple missions concurrently so the tracking algorithm was also tested against multiple satellites, each with different priorities set by the operators. A group of satellites ranging from LEO satellites to Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites were tracked to ensure the accuracy of the new antenna motors, its software, and that it maximizes its on-target time for objects of a higher priority.

Figure 5: Receive Signal (dB) vs Antenna Pointing Elevation (Deg) vs Time (seconds) Post Retrofit – Jan 2014

V. TRAINING

DRDC committed six staff to operate M3MSat. Although each operator has gone through the standard training package of the GS, each satellite is unique in its mission, payloads, and sensors. So a specific training plan was required to bring the operators up to speed with M3MSat. As part of the contract with Com Dev the training of the GS operations team came from multiple sources. This included classroom training from the Com Dev functional leads, and hands-on involvement in the Integrated Systems Tests (ISTs) while the satellite was at the David Florida Lab (DFL) Figure 4: Receive Signal (dB) vs Antenna Pointing [9] for thermal and vacuum testing, and the ETE test. Elevation (Deg) vs Time (x10000 seconds) Pre The ETE test was a week-long full chain test between Retrofit - Feb 2011 M3MSat and its primary GS. In July of 2013, M3MSat was brought to the DFL, which is located on the same campus as the DRDC GS. Horn antennas on the roof of DFL were hooked up to the transmit and receive ports of the satellite and padded down to simulate the distances expected for the intended orbit of the satellite while the DRDC operational team prepared the GS to perform a series of tests over the air to simulate the LEOP and commissioning activities developed by Com Dev. This activity, aside from validating the ground hardware, also served to reinforce the team’s knowledge and ‘muscle-memory’ of the pre-pass checks/activities, our efficiency to perform tasks during the short pass windows, perform post-pass analysis, and finally log the

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