Raisting Earth Station
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Raisting Earth Station (
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
: ''Erdfunkstelle Raisting'') is a
satellite ground station A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fro ...
near
Raisting Raisting is a municipality in the Weilheim-Schongau district, in Bavaria, Germany. Sport The towns association football club SV Raisting, formed in 1924, experienced its greatest success in 2013 when it won promotion to the southern division o ...
,
Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
. The station was Germany's first commercial station for satellite communication and is still one of the largest ground stations in the world.


History

After examining many potential sites, the
Deutsche Bundespost The (, ) was a German state-run postal service and telecommunications business founded in 1947. It was initially the second largest federal employer during its time. After staff reductions in the 1980s, the staff was reduced to roughly 543,20 ...
began construction of the first civil satellite ground station in Germany in 1963. Its construction allowed for satellite communications between Europe and North America for the first time. It was used to transmit, among other things, the Apollo 11 Moon Landing and the
1972 Munich Olympics The 1972 Summer Olympics (), officially known as the Games of the XX Olympiad () and officially branded as Munich 1972 (; ), were an international multi-sport event held in Munich, West Germany, from 26 August to 11 September 1972. It was the ...
. More recently the station was to have been used as a ground station for the
European Student Moon Orbiter The European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO) was a proposed European student mission to the Moon. Student teams from 19 universities throughout Europe worked on the program. ESMO was conceived by the Student Space Exploration & Technology Initiativ ...
before the mission's cancellation.


Operations

Deutsche Telekom Deutsche Telekom AG (, ; often just Telekom, DTAG or DT; stylised as ·T·) is a partially state-owned German telecommunications company headquartered in Bonn and the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue. It was formed in 199 ...
operated the station from its construction until 2005 when it was then sold to US-based EMC. In 2016, EMC was then purchased by Anuvu who operate portions of the station today. Today the
radome A radome (a portmanteau of "radar" and "dome") is a structural, weatherproof enclosure that protects a radar antenna (radio), antenna. The radome is constructed of material transparent to radio waves. Radomes protect the antenna from weathe ...
has been preserved as an industrial monument commemorating the dawn of satellite communications. The radome and station are available for public tour.


References

{{Authority control Ground stations Astronomical observatories in Germany 1963 establishments in West Germany Buildings and structures completed in 1963