Transcript ResearchFrontiersTalk_ntl_270209

Satellite Receiving Station Overview
Neil Lonie
Satellite Receiving Station
Space Technology Centre
University of Dundee
27 February, 2009
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Background
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Based in Ewing Building and part of Space Technology Centre along
with Space Systems Group which is also led by Dr Steve Parkes
Previously part of Electronics Engineering & Physics Division
Developed as result of various academic and student projects in
electronics and communications engineering
Established as an operational receiving station 1976
Funded throughout by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
– initially through grant support and via contract since 1978
Part of NERC Services & Facilities group – approx. 30 facilities
funded to support UK environmental researchers
Subject to 5-yearly NERC reviews – successfully reviewed in early
2008 and new contract awarded for April 2009 – March 2014
Additional income raised through commercial data sales to non-NERC
users including overseas, ESA and EU project participation for
example – contributes towards station upgrades, maintenance costs etc.
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Overview of Activities
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Main activities are Earth Observation data reception, archiving and
distribution to support environmental research – not usually directly
involved in data analysis/research
Provide UK researchers and other potential users with access to data
and imagery – generally via website and internet delivery, but also on
tape, DVD etc. or in hardcopy printed form
Raw received satellite data are processed to and distributed in standard
formats widely used by the research community, e.g. NOAA Level 1b
Imagery from individual spectral bands can also be extracted from raw
data and provided in standard image file formats and map projections
Higher level processing for scientific data products and data analysis is
generally undertaken by users and/or other facilities
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Staff and Working Arrangements
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Staff expertise is generally in computing and engineering
• Steve Parkes (Director) – Overall responsibility
• Neil Lonie (Manager) – Oversee operations – e.g. staff, user enquiries, NERC
contact, admin, finance, reporting, equipment procurement, installation and
maintenance, data reception/archiving arrangements
• Andrew Brooks (Software/Systems Manager) – Software development and
maintenance, systems admin and specification, data processing/archiving etc.
• Jon Bowyer (Software/Systems Specialist) – as above
• Paul Crawford (Electronics/Communications Engineer) – Hardware/software
development and maintenance for antenna control and RF receiver systems
• Drew Doig (Technician) – Shift Operator
• Bruce Isabella (Technician) – Shift Operator
• Les Moonlight (Technician) – Maintenance and Operator cover
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Station operates on a 24/7 basis each day of the year
Manned each day – typically between 8 am and 10 pm
Only downtime periods occur during extended mains power failures –
very rare – UPS systems maintain reception operations for ~ 2 hours
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Data Received and the Archive
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Receive and archive data from various EO satellites – mainly polar
orbiting satellites with direct data broadcast capability
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NOAA-AVHRR series
Nimbus 7 – CZCS
OrbView2-SeaWiFS
Terra/Aqua-MODIS
Nov. 1978 – present
Aug. 1979 – Jun. 1986
Sep. 1997 – 2005
Apr. 2000 – present
Currently receive data from 25-30 polar satellite passes per day
Full polar archive comprises over 120,000 passes at present
Data also received from various geostationary weather satellites giving
up-to-date full global coverage imagery
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Meteosat – Europe
Archived 2002 - present
IODC – Europe (Indian Ocean coverage) Archived 2005 - present
GOES-East – United States
Archived 2006 - present
GOES-West – United States
Archived 2006 - present
MTSAT – Japan
Archived 2006 - present
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Geographical Coverage
Polar Orbiting Satellites
Dundee coverage footprint for polar
orbiting satellites such as the
NOAA series , Terra and Aqua
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Geographical Coverage
Geostationary Satellites
Data from European Meteosat and “foreign” satellites provide global coverage
Meteosat – Europe
IODC – Europe
GOES-West - US
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MTSAT – Japan
GOES-East - US
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Imagery – NOAA Satellites
Typical NOAA-AVHRR
full pass browse images:
Left - Band 2 (near-IR)
Right - Band 4 (therm. IR)
Below - pass coverage
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Imagery – Terra/Aqua Satellites
Typical Terra-MODIS full
pass browse images:
Left – Band 2 (visible)
Right – Bands 143 (RGB)
Below - pass coverage
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Imagery – Geostationary Satellites
Meteosat – Bands 321 (RGB)
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GOES-East – Band 1 (visible)
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Main Facilities and Operations
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The Station has 5 tracking antenna systems for polar satellite reception
4 are the main operational antennas – 2 each sited on the Dental
School and University Tower buildings to provide clear horizon
5th antenna on the Ewing Building is a prototype/backup – coverage
restricted to the East in particular due to higher buildings
Each antenna receives in either the L or X-band frequency ranges used
by EO satellites – centred around 1.7 GHz and 8.2 GHz respectively
Generally operate in “programme track” mode – predict satellite path
using orbit model and regular parameter updates for each satellite
Can also be used in “auto track” mode – monitor received signal level
and adjust antenna pointing to optimise this
Antennas often track same satellite for backup purposes, but 3 or 4
satellites are regularly overhead simultaneously – one antenna tracks
each
Each antenna has an associated tracking control system, receiver and
data ingest computer
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Main Facilities and Operations
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After ingest, data are transferred to servers for low level processing,
archiving and web access for users
Also transferred in real time to Plymouth Marine Lab for high level
processing
Data are always archived offline – on either CD or LTO (400 Gbyte)
tape at present – copies are sent off-site for secure storage
3 storage servers provide around 12 terabytes of online storage
They hold online copies of the entire AVHRR and SeaWiFS polar
archives at full resolution for immediate user access via the web
The Station also has 2 fixed position antenna systems for reception of
geostationary satellite data
In-house capability – most Station systems including antennas,
control software/hardware, receivers, data ingest and processing
software are designed, developed and maintained by staff
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Main Facilities
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New Antenna Installations
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User Community
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User community extends across most environmental science areas – e.g. marine, atmospheric, Earth,
terrestrial, polar
Application areas include physical and biological oceanography, meteorology, hydrology,
volcanology, snow/ice cover, land use, agriculture
Users within NERC scheme include:
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Users outwith NERC scheme and generally paying for access to data have included:
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Research centres such as National Oceanography Centre (Southampton), Plymouth Marine Lab, Centre for
Ecology and Hydrology
NERC EO centres of excellence such as Centre for Observation of Air-Sea Interactions & Fluxes (CASIX)
Individual researchers and groups within environmental science departments of many UK HEIs
UK organisations such as Ministry of Defence and the Met Office
ESA and EU funded projects
NASA, NOAA and NATO projects
Research centres and HEIs throughout Europe
Commercial remote sensing companies
Data requirements vary from a few scenes to several thousand scenes for major projects
Website provides free access to browse images of the entire archive and geostationary images for
anyone who registers
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Users range from researchers, students, national weather services, operational support activities (e.g. flight
planning) to personal interest
Over 300,000 user registrations since site was launched
Around 10 million free image downloads annually
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Dundee-Plymouth Partnership
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Largest proportion of users are from a marine background due to close
partnership with Remote Sensing Group at Plymouth Marine Lab.
Plymouth RSG is also NERC funded – provides higher level EO
products mainly derived from Dundee data
Primarily focus on marine products due to local expertise – can also
provide standard products for atmospheric and terrestrial applications
and volcano monitoring, for example
Products include
– Geo-referenced sea-surface temperature, land brightness temperature and
vegetation index from AVHRR
– Chlorophyll and other ocean colour properties from SeaWiFS
– Ocean colour and cloud products from MODIS
– Single image products, weekly/monthly/other composites are available
– Products are supplied in near-real time or from the archive
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Dundee and Plymouth now operate a linked facility within the NERC
set up – NERC Earth Observation Data Acquisition and Analysis
Service (NEODAAS)
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Supported Activities
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Individual student and academic research projects to major NERC
programmes and Centres of Excellence are supported
A key activity with Plymouth is near real-time operational support of research
cruises – e.g. 16 major research cruises supported in 2005/06 spanning a total
of 354 cruise days
NERC-CEH Phenology observatory – provided MODIS data for this
development project to monitor seasonal vegetation for long-term trends which
may indicate climate change
ESA CONTRAILS – partnered DLR and KNMI in project to assess extent of
aircraft contrails and demonstrate a monitoring service – processed ~10000
archive satellite passes and delivered contrail detection maps for analysis
NASA SeaWiFS ocean colour project – provided all received SeaWiFS data
for 8 years from launch in 1997 (~7500 passes)
EU MARS – recently delivered ~7500 AVHRR passes to project partners for
use in this agriculture monitoring project to support EU policy
For 2008 review, NEODAAS identified over 600 scientific publications
supported by our data over previous 5 years – 270 were refereed papers –
others were non-refereed, conference presentations, posters, dissertations etc.
Dundee images also used regularly in books, magazines, newspapers, TV etc.
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Forward Look
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Additional antennas installed on Tower Building in recent years to receive
from more satellites – systems such as receivers continue to be upgraded to
improve flexibility
Aim to maintain support for our existing satellites and follow on missions –
e.g. MetOp and NPP/NPOESS joint European/US polar system
Look to gain access to more EO satellites – e.g. Indian and Chinese and other
European satellites
Possible support for developers of low cost satellites with no ground station
infrastructure
Provide online storage for entire Dundee archive – for better archive
management and to allow processing of long time-series data
Develop NEODAAS partnership further – e.g. operate Plymouth processing
systems at Dundee for faster product delivery for NRT applications
Improve support for science areas other than marine through Plymouth
partnership or new partnerships – e.g. the CEH Phenology project
Implement partner/user developed processing algorithms at Dundee for
efficient data processing – particularly long time-series data sets
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