Sep 26 – 30, 2022
Capital Hilton
US/Eastern timezone
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Haystack GSI: An Open Source Satellite Ground Station Interface

Sep 26, 2022, 11:00 AM
30m
Presidential Ballroom (Capital Hilton)

Presidential Ballroom

Capital Hilton

Talk Main Track

Speakers

Maximilian Riccioli (University of Texas at Austin) Michael Gutierrez (California Institute of Technology)

Description

Spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) typically have communications windows lasting between 5 and 15 minutes. With limited datarates and significant amounts of information to be synced, many satellite missions cannot afford the time it takes for an operator to manually send commands -- especially if human error comes into play. Large communications companies and deep space operations have automated systems to communicate with their spacecraft, but there exist no freely-available software implementations that are compatible with smaller-scale missions, who often end up inputting and uploading commands individually. Haystack GSI, inspired by MIT Haystack Observatory’s AERO/VISTA CubeSat project, aims to change that by developing a modular open-source software solution with a GNURadio OOT package at its core. It abstracts out signal processing and data “plumbing,” utilizing GNURadio Companion as a convenient user interface for operators to configure ground station hardware, direct the outflow of downlinked packets, and schedule commands well ahead of time. Here, we present our progress in development of the Haystack GSI platform and what we plan to work on next.

Primary authors

Frank Lind (MIT Haystack Observatory) John Swoboda (MIT Haystack Observatory) Mary Knapp (MIT Haystack Observatory) Maximilian Riccioli (University of Texas at Austin) Michael Gutierrez (California Institute of Technology) Ryan Volz (MIT Haystack Observatory) T. Lucas Briggs (University of Texas at Austin) Tobias Gedenk (MIT Haystack Observatory)

Presentation materials