Kiruna Station is an

ESTRACK The European Space Tracking (ESTRACK) network consists of a number of ground-based space-tracking stations belonging to the European Space Agency (ESA), and operated by the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The st ...

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

antenna station for communication with

spacecraft A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed spaceflight, to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including Telecommunications, communications, Earth observation satellite, Earth observation, Weather s ...

operated by the

Swedish Space Corporation The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), also registered as Svenska rymdaktiebolaget, is a Swedish space services company. SSC operations consist of launches of sounding rockets and stratospheric balloons, tests of future generation rocket engines a ...

. It is located 38 km east of

Kiruna (; ; ; ) is the northernmost Stad (Sweden), city in Sweden, situated in the province of Lapland, Sweden, Lapland. It had 17,002 inhabitants in 2016 and is the seat of Kiruna Municipality (population: 23,167 in 2016) in Norrbotten County. The c ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. The site hosts one 15 metre- and one 13-metre-diameter antenna, each with S- and

X-band The X band is the designation for a band of frequency, frequencies in the microwave radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum. In some cases, such as in communication engineering, the frequency range of the X band is set at approximately 7.0� ...

reception and S-band transmission. It also hosts a

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

-Tracking and Data Facility (TDF) antenna. It is mainly used for the

ERS-2 European Remote Sensing satellite (ERS) was the European Space Agency's first Earth-observing satellite programme using a polar orbit. It consisted of two satellites, ERS-1 and ERS-2, with ERS-1 being launched in 1991. ERS-1 ERS-1 launched ...

Envisat Envisat ("Environmental Satellite") is a large Earth-observing satellite which has been inactive since 2012. It is still in orbit and considered space debris. Operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), it was the world's largest civilian Ear ...

, and

ASTRO-F AKARI (ASTRO-F) was an infrared astronomy space observatory, satellite developed by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, in cooperation with institutes of Europe and Korea. It was launched on 21 February 2006, at 21:28 Coordinated Universal Tim ...

missions.

External links

Kiruna station page

ESA webpage on ESTRACK, including links to all stations

References

ESTRACK facilities Kiruna Municipality Buildings and structures in Norrbotten County {{space-stub

See also

External links

References