Ground Tracking Stations

The ground-based tracking station is an integral part of Spektr-M ground-based scientific complex and it operates in conjunction with the onboard high ratio data transmission radio complex (VIRK-M), forming the spacecraft-Earth radio link.

Ground Tracking Stations:

• Provide pointing of the tracking station antenna to the spacecraft and performs tracking of the spacecraft during communication session;
• Extract scientific, service and telemetric information from the received signal, with subsequent transmission via communication lines to data processing center and flight control center.

Spektr-M spacecraft will be located in halo orbit near the Lagrange point (L2) of the Sun-Earth system. Due to its great distance that is more than 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth, it is necessary to use ground antennas with the mirror diameter of at least 40 meters in order to compensate the  signal attenuation in outer space. In Russia, such antennas can be RT-64 (Kalyazin) and RT-70 (Yevpatoriya).

Example of possible ground tracking stations for Millimetron observatory: Kalyazin (64 meters), Evpatoriya (70 meters)