Development of an Automatic Beacon Receiver Ground Station for Spacecraft Health Monitoring

The Tuskegee Satellite Systems (TSS) group, in conjunction with the Stanford Space Systems Development Laboratory (SSDL) has initiated the development of a spacecraft health monitoring ground station prototype. This TSS prototype will serve as a scholastic and commercial testbed for further spacecraft healthy research and operations. Fully automatic with only periodic inspection by a local operator, the TSS station will serve as a model for remote and unmanned ground stations. In tandem, replicas of the station will be exported to selected global locations. Linked to the Mission Control Centre at Stanford via the internet, these stations will provide 24 hour monitoring of low earth orbiting spacecraft health. This paper describes the station architecture, its use in telemetry, tracking and command, its value as a testbed for spacecraft autonomy research and its current and future implementation.