2.3. Development of a satellite tracking ground station The best European universities in the aerospace field carry out design and implementation of real projects, by which students acquire a sound training in both contents and generic competences. In some cases, these projects result in satellites orbiting the Earth and sending telemetry accessible to any ground station that meets the required specifications, such as the Delfi-C3 (http://www.delfispace.nl/). In addition to this type of satellites, important observation satellites such as NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ttp://www.goes.noaa.gov/) also offer open telemetry. There is also an ESA initiative for the creation of a worldwide ground network to receive data from on-orbit university satellites under the tutelage of ESA, called GENSO (Global ducational Network for Satellite Operations, http://www.genso.org/).And in 2012 the QB50 project (https://www.qb50.eu)
was started, a project funded by the 7th Framework Program to launch and operate an international network
of 50 CubeSats, which is described in Section 2.5. All these potential uses led to the construction of a ground station (see Fig. 1) to allow the communication with open satellites, down linking their data and processing it on ground. The station has been installed at the E-USOC.
The set-up of the station and its Monitoring and Control System was carried out through several Final Theses. The results of these works were validated by specifications; finally the students prepare the test reports and fill a requirements validation matrix. Each subsystem is verified individually before assembling it with the previously verified modules and performing an integrated verification. Once all modules have been tested and assembled,the complete satellite is tested in its final configuration.
The groups have to work as a team and organize each of their members’ tasks in order to ensure an efficient use of
time and resources, and the proper level of safety; the latter is supported by a lecturer monitoring their work.
Students are able to get in close contact with practical aspects of satellite design, development and operation:
(i) They are able to see, use and perform a series of tests and measurements on a functioning satellite and its
components. This allows them to get familiar with satellite components and their performances, as well as with laboratory test equipment and procedures.
(ii) They are able to communicate with the satellite and gain experience with some of the capabilities and limitations related to remote operation and monitoring.
(iii) They get a first hands-on contact with integration and verification activities as they are performed in space
industry (within the limitations imposed by the demonstrator satellite itself, by the laboratory environment and by organizational aspects such as duration of the lessons and number of students); these activities have a big impact in the overall cost of a satellite project and are usually not well understood when studied only from a theoretical perspective.