Background

On May 1st to May 4th I went on an overnight field trip for my Space Hardware class. The purpose was to demonstrate a complete software project using C and practice debugging using eclipse tools and AGI’s Systems Tool Kit (STK). I was able to apply the skills I’ve learned in the course based on RF equipment like spectrum analyzers, orbital mechanics, and RF transmission to perform antenna dish measurements and learn more about the receiving equipment at the Algonquin Radio Observatory (ARO). The ARO is Canada’s largest radio telescope which we used to take measurements of the largest celestial source in the sky.

Experience

ARO Dish

Views of the 46m dish from afar and below.

ARO Operations Room

Facility Tour by Prof. Ben Quine.

CTO of Thoth Technology Inc., Professor Ben Quine (right) and my mentor and instructor for the Space Hardware course Hugh Chesser (left) on top of the ARO dish.

Tracked Satellite

The result for the tracking of PRN-11 proved successful as we saw a spike in power at our center frequency of 1575.42 MHz. This spike appeared to extend from the -75dBm to -80 dBm range, while the noise floor varied around the -90 to -105 dBm range. This confirms with our software package which calculated a power level to be around -76.7dBm.

MysterySat

The spectrum analyzer was setup to a broad range of 1000 MHz to 1700 MHz based on the known bands provided for each navigation system i.e. GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and Beidou. We identified peaks at 1561 MHz for the upper band and 1268 MHz and 1207 MHz for the lower band to investigate. We confirmed that peaks were at the prime location for the BEIDOU system. The peaks in the lower band appeared at 1207 MHz and 1268 MHz, while the peak in the upper band appeared at 1561 MHz. These frequencies can be confirmed for BEIDOU. Which was confirmed to be correct by the instructor.

During the post-processing, I applied my skills with STK to confirm that the Mystery Satellite was in-fact from the Beidou navigation constellation by importing the Beidou TLE from Celestrak as well as the MysterySat TLE given to us by the instructor. We confirmed the particular satellite in the Beidou navigation constellation is Beidou-3-M2-40749 and our software was even more precise because it was almost directly overhead.

Enjoying Algonquin National Park

We got to enjoy a nice campfire with marshmallows on the last day. And while others were still fixing their code, I went on a couple hikes through the park with my good buddies.

Reflection

I think the field trip to ARO was the most beneficial experience I’ve had throughout my Space Engineering education. I really think the activities we performed – especially the satellite tracking was extremely practical and applicable to us and our education. I’m happy that our software program worked flawlessly as we prepared for months to accomplish this goal. We were able to distinguish the satellite’s signal and from which navigational constellation it was from. Its really gratifying to say that we’ve used the largest radio telescope in Canada and used it to track GNSS satellites. We proved our ability to develop software in C and debug using eclipse tools and STK. I learned a lot about RF electrical equipment like spectrum analyzers and oscilloscopes. I developed a further understanding of orbital mechanics and RF transmission through the ARO activities.

My suggestion for this project would be to include a graphical user interface component to the code. I think having it presented in a nice clean way instead of having the user enter commands into eclipse’s console would be much better. For example, if someone could have a github page that automatically fetches the newest TLE from Celestrak and has a nice display of all the satellites in-view and plots their trajectories would be a step up. There are packages to help accomplish this goal which have various online support tools see Slide 4 of this NASA presentation. I may try to work on something like this in my spare time.

I realized that students who didn’t know how to use STK well enough couldn’t test their code properly. For assistance I sent them to a list of online resources that can easily be used for checking orbital, time and position parameters. Here in my previous blog post with all those links for Julian Date, ECF positions, and much more.

More on our Satellite Tracking software

See the readme and reports/updates at ARO-Tracking-Software.

More on the ARO

Completed and commissioned in the 1965, ARO’s 46m antenna is the largest antenna in Canada and one of the largest in North America. The ARO is situated on a 100 acre wild and breathtakingly beautiful site in the North of Algonquin park on Lake Traverse, deep inside the park. I found it pretty hard to explain where it exactly is so below is a map.

Read More at www.AROCanada.com