W. Keim, V. Kudielka, and A.L. Scholtz (Austria)
Satellite Communication and Antennas, Applications of Satellite Communication.
A satellite ground station has been set up and is being suc cessfully operated at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Vienna. The location, a densely populated region of the town, has been chosen for convenience, but suffers from man made noise and intermodulation interfer ence originating from mobile radio base station carriers. By participating in the Canadian based MOST (Microvari ability and Oscillations of Stars) project it could be shown that a scientific ground station can be set up and operated at cost affordable for Universities. The station has been built using off-the-shelf semi-professional equipment. The MOST satellite is in a polar sun synchronous orbit at a height of around 830 km. During overpass typically lasting 15 minutes the satellite has to be tracked by a 3 m dish with 0.5 precision, which is a challenging task. Since Octo ber 2003, reliable data download from the MOST satellite is performed with the Vienna ground station contributing nearly half of the data traffic.
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