+ - Telemetry received from ATV via ESA tracking stati->
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japan_dan
japan_dan writes "When ESA's first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) orbited to the International Space Station in 2008, it did so with a NASA waiver as it only had two communication channels: via NASA's TDRSS relay satellites or via ESA's own Artemis relay sat. To provide a third back-up channel and enhance redundancy, ESA have been working for more than a year to reconfigure the ATV's proximity link transceiver — normally used during docking to communicate line-of-sight with the Russian module of the ISS — to enable it to transmit and receive signals from ground stations. ESA choose to implement this as an 'all-European' solution: the stations selected for the new role were ESA's own 15m ESTRACK stations at Maspalomas and Villafranca, Spain, and Redu, Belgium. The engineers also had to devise a method to demonstrate to the ISS partners' satisfaction that the new link worked prior to flight — and that's exactly what happened this evening by running an over-the-air test between ATV Kepler, mounted on top of Ariane 5 in Kourou, and ESA's Kourou station, about 10 kms away. The telemetry was then sent from Kourou station to ESOC in Germany (where the ESTRACK control centre is located) and then back to ATV control centre in Toulouse."
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Telemetry received from ATV via ESA tracking stati