...geospatial information provider RapidEye AG in upgrading and consolidating its ground station facilities. Engineers from SSTL’s Ground Systems Group are providing a new and upgraded Spacecraft Control Centre for RapidEye’s headquarters in Brandenburg, Germany, and relocating its Tracking, Telemetry and Command (TT&C) ground station equipment to the Kongsberg Satellite Services AS (KSAT) facility in Svalbard, Norway, which receives Earth Observation data from its constellation of five satellites.

As part of the project, SSTL’s Ground Systems Group will also provide new ground station equipment, to incorporate tracking, telemetry and command and S-band data recovery to the existing X-band SG-9 antenna system currently used at the KSAT facilities in Svalbard. The current Spacecraft Control Centre in Brandenburg, Germany, was built by SSTL in 2006 as part of the five-spacecraft RapidEye constellation mission. The improved Centre will allow RapidEye to continue command and control of their constellation remotely from Germany, while retaining back-up TT&C services through the ground station facilities at SSTL in Guildford, UK. SSTL is owned by Astrium BV.