This chapter provides an overview of the ground segment design and the most common functional requirements it needs to fulfil. These functions comprise the ability to establish an RF based space link with the satellite in order to transfer telemetry (TM) and telecommands (TC) and measure its distance, angular location, and Doppler (referred to as radiometric tracking). The flight dynamics functions needs to perform orbit determination, compute all relevant events and provide the TT&C antennas the pointing information for upcoming contacts. The mission control system has to manage the reception of TM, the transfer of TCs, the detection of any out-of-limit parameter and provide means to analyse and archive the received telemetry. The ability to maintain the onboard software is an important requirement on the ground segment in order to be able to uplink onboard software patches, whenever provided by the satellite manufacturer. The coordination of all satellite and ground activities is the domain of mission planning which needs to efficiently manage the available ground resources and constraints and optimise the service time of a satellite and its payload. Reliable satellite operations is strongly dependant on the correct ground segment configuration and correct development, validation, and storage of all operational products which is the task of the operations preparations functionality. The monitoring and control function is an important means to verify the functional status of the entire ground segment and to detect any malfunctioning early enough to allow the operator to take corrective actions and avoid the cause of damage to the spacecraft or its payload which could lead to a service interruption. The need to implement a satellite simulator inside the ground segment is described which allows the validation of flight operational products and to perform training prior to launch. The need to properly and accurately define interfaces between internal ground segment components but also to external entities is explained, and the concept of an interface baseline is introduced as a means for an efficient configuration control at technical and contractual level.


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    Title :

    The Ground Segment


    Additional title:

    Space Technology Library


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2022-08-24


    Size :

    12 pages





    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




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