Ground Station Design for LEO's: Implementation for KvarkenSat

Abstract

Exploration of space and the earth over the decades has led to remarkable innovations and developments in the Space industry. The space industry is transitioning from the Old Space era to New Space bringing in tremendous opportunities to develop an infinite number of applications using satellite data. Satellite data provide valuable information that helps businesses, organizations, science, government, people, and the environment in numerous ways. In space missions, apart from the satellite, a ground segment station is an essential element to receive the satellite data. Old Space players used highly expensive sophisticated ground segment stations for receiving the satellite data. Due to the advancement in technology, New Space players such as private companies, organizations, universities, and individuals have built ground stations based on the costs and mission purpose. In this thesis, a low-cost simple ground station is implemented that is capable of receiving telemetry data and payload data from different satellites to serve the forthcoming KvarkenSat small satellite mission. Apart from the ground station received satellite data, through the utilization of open-source satellite data from different providers, value-added information and satellite products that help in different applications were additionally assessed in this work. The simple nature of the ground station implemented in this thesis helps any individual to understand the concepts of satellite communication and showcases the data reception process. The ground station will help in further research on satellite communication and inspire mainly students and researchers to contribute to space technology development and utilization. The contribution to space technologies will offer solutions to strengthen the sustainability of our society and ultimately serve for the betterment of the earth.