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Troll Satellite Station ( no, Troll satellittstasjon), commonly abbreviated TrollSat, 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 wave ...
located at
Troll A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human be ...
in
Queen Maud Land Queen Maud Land ( no, Dronning Maud Land) is a roughly region of Antarctica claimed by Norway as a dependent territory. It borders the claimed British Antarctic Territory 20° west and the Australian Antarctic Territory 45° east. In addit ...
,
Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest co ...
. The earth station is owned by
Kongsberg Satellite Services Kongsberg Satellite Services AS (KSAT) is a Norwegian-based company. KSAT has the most extensive ground station network globally, and the world's largest ground station for support of polar orbiting satellites located at 78° North - Svalbard, ...
(KSAT), a joint venture between the
Kongsberg Group Kongsberg Gruppen is an international technology group headquartered in Norway, that supplies High tech, high-technology systems to customers in the merchant marine, Defense industry, defence, aerospace, Offshore drilling, offshore oil and gas in ...
and the
Norwegian Space Center The Norwegian Space Agency (NOSA) (formerly the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC); Norwegian'':'' ''Norsk Romsenter'') is a Norwegian government agency that follows up Norway's public space activities. NOSA's goal is to ensure that Norway benefits f ...
. The
radome A radome (a portmanteau of radar and dome) is a structural, weatherproof enclosure that protects a radar antenna. The radome is constructed of material transparent to radio waves. Radomes protect the antenna from weather and conceal antenn ...
s are located on top of
Jutulsessen Jutulsessen is a nunatak in the Gjelsvik Mountains in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. It is located in Princess Martha Coast, from the King Haakon VII Sea. Jutulsessen is the site of the Norwegian research station Troll and the affiliated Troll ...
, a nunatak area next to the research station at Troll. The research station is operated by the
Norwegian Polar Institute The Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI; no, Norsk Polarinstitutt) is Norway's central governmental institution for scientific research, mapping and environmental monitoring in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The NPI is a directorate under Norway's Min ...
, which also maintains the earth station. TrollSat started operations on 1 March 2007 and was officially opened on 20 January 2008. The earth station serves
low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never m ...
satellites and consists of a antenna capable of
S band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the conventiona ...
and
X band The X band is the designation for a band of 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 rather indefinitely set at approxi ...
reception. Information is relayed using a and a C band uplink. Operations control is carried out by KSAT in
Tromsø Tromsø (, , ; se, Romsa ; fkv, Tromssa; sv, Tromsö) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Tromsø. Tromsø lies in Northern Norway. The municipality is the 21s ...
,
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
. Satellites using TrollSat include Radarsat, GeoEye,
WorldView A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural ...
, Galileo and
CHEOPS Khufu or Cheops was an ancient Egyptian monarch who was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, in the first half of the Old Kingdom period (26th century BC). Khufu succeeded his father Sneferu as king. He is generally accepted as havin ...
. The system is coordinated with
Svalbard Satellite Station Svalbard Satellite Station ( no, Svalbard satellittstasjon) or SvalSat is a satellite ground station located on Platåberget near Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Opened in 1997, it is operated by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), a jo ...
(SvalSat) in Longyearbyen, Norway, which combined offer downloading twice per orbit.


History

Troll was established as a research station by the Norwegian Polar Institute in 1990.Kyvik (2008): 153 The station took its name from the surrounding jagged mountains, which resemble
troll A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human be ...
s of
Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern peri ...
. Already at this time, there were proposals by the Norwegian Space Centre to establish an earth station at Troll, but the lack of all-year activity stranded the plans. Instead, SvalSat was established to serve as an earth station for NASA's
Earth Observing System The Earth Observing System (EOS) is a program of NASA comprising a series of artificial satellite missions and scientific instruments in Earth orbit designed for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, atmosphere, and oceans ...
(EOS). Longyearbyen was selected because of its high
latitude In geography, latitude is a coordinate that specifies the north– south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from –90° at the south pole to 90° at the north po ...
, which allows all satellites with an orbit above to use only a single ground station—yet download from every orbit. The Svalbard facility opened on 15 April 1999 and was originally owned by the Norwegian Space Centre. Kongsberg Satellite Services was established in 2002 to jointly operate SvalSat and
Tromsø Satellite Station Tromsø Satellite Station ( no, Tromsø Satellittstasjon, TSS), until 1988 known as Tromsø Telemetry Station ( no, Tromsø telemetristasjon), is a satellite earth station located in Tromsø, Norway. The facility is owned by Kongsberg Satellite ...
(TSS). In 2003, Norwegian authorities decided to extend its operations in Antarctica by establishing an all-year research station. By then, Norway was the only country with a territorial claim to Antarctica to not have an all-year research station on the continent. Construction was carried out from December 2004 through February 2005.Kyvik (2008): 154 To ease logistics, Norway took the initiative to establish
Dronning Maud Land Air Network Dronning Maud Land Air Network Project (DROMLAN) is a coordinated project between eleven countries with bases in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica ( no, Dronning Maud Land) to create a coordinated logistics service to reduce costs. The participating coun ...
(DROMLAN), a cooperation between the countries with bases in Queen Maud Land to streamline transport costs. The permanent
Troll Airfield Troll Airfield is an airstrip located from the research station Troll in Princess Martha Coast in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica. Owned and operated by the Norwegian Polar Institute, it consists of a runway on glacial blue ice on the Antarctic ...
was opened on 11 February 2005. The basis for TrollSat was an agreement signed in 2006 between the Norwegian Polar Institute, the Norwegian Space Centre and Kongsberg Satellite Services. It specified that the Space Centre would install a Kongsberg-built radome, while the Polar Institute would provide power and undertake maintenance. In exchange, they could freely use the earth station for their own transmission needs. The commercial activities would be carried out by Kongsberg Satellite Services. A concern was raised regarding if satellite downloading would violate the
Antarctic Treaty russian: link=no, Договор об Антарктике es, link=no, Tratado Antártico , name = Antarctic Treaty System , image = Flag of the Antarctic Treaty.svgborder , image_width = 180px , caption ...
, but the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The enti ...
negated. The station started operations on 1 March 2007 and was officially opened by Prime Minister of Norway,
Jens Stoltenberg Jens Stoltenberg (born 16 March 1959) is a Norwegian politician who has been serving as the 13th secretary general of NATO since 2014. A member of the Norwegian Labour Party, he previously served as the 34th prime minister of Norway from 2000 t ...
.


Operation

TrollSat is owned and operated by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), which is again equally owned by Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace and the Norwegian Space Centre, the latter which is again owned by the
Ministry of Trade and Industry A Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry or variations is a ministry that is concerned with a nation's trade, industry and commerce. Notable examples are: List *Algeria: Ministry of Industry and ...
. KSAT is not tied to a particular operator of satellites and the antennas communicate with multiple satellites, thus reducing costs compared to dedicated ground stations. For a typical satellite, data is delivered to the end customer no more than thirty minutes after downloading. KSAT operates two polar ground stations optimized for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, the other being SvalSat at Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. These are the only two ground stations able to communicate with all orbits of LEO satellites. By using both stations, customers can download data twice per orbit, twenty-six times per day, with only a forty-minute maximum delay. The ground station is connected to KSAT's Tromsø Network Operation Center, which is also connected to the TSS and SvalSat. This allows for redundancy as also TSS and TrollSat can be used to communicate with the satellites. The operation center is responsible for backup,
scheduling A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are i ...
and conflict resolution. The facility uses
interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader def ...
and shared ground services, such as a common protocol for communication and similar design of the antennas, to increase flexibility and reduce costs and risk. TrollSat sees only a fraction of the business of SvalSat. Troll is used for downloading from the
Canadian Space Agency The Canadian Space Agency (CSA; french: Agence spatiale canadienne, ASC) is the national space agency of Canada, established in 1990 by the ''Canadian Space Agency Act''. The president is Lisa Campbell, who took the position on September 3, 20 ...
's
Radarsat-1 RADARSAT-1 was Canada's first commercial Earth observation satellite. It utilized synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to obtain images of the Earth's surface to manage natural resources and monitor global climate change. As of March 2013, the satelli ...
and Radarsat-2, and the private
GeoEye-1 ''GeoEye-1'' is a high-resolution Earth observation satellite owned by DigitalGlobe, launched in September 2008. The satellite was acquired in the 2013 purchase of GeoEye. History On 1 December 2004, General Dynamics C4 Systems announced it ...
,
WorldView-1 ''WorldView-1'' (WV 1) is a commercial earth observation satellite owned by DigitalGlobe. WorldView-1 was launched on 18 September 2007, followed later by the ''WorldView-2'' in 2009. First imagery from ''WorldView-1'' was available in October 20 ...
and
WorldView-2 ''WorldView-2'' (WV 2) is a commercial Earth observation satellite owned by DigitalGlobe. ''WorldView-2'' provides commercially available panchromatic imagery of resolution, and eight-band multispectral imagery with resolution. It was launc ...
. It will also be one of thirty ground stations for the
European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...
(ESA)'s satellite navigation system Galileo, and is Norway's main contribution to the project. It further serves ESA's
Envisat Envisat ("Environmental Satellite") is a large inactive Earth-observing satellite which is still in orbit and now considered space debris. Operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), it was the world's largest civilian Earth observation satel ...
and several
National Aeronautics and Space Administration The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding ...
satellites.


Facilities

Troll is located in the eastern part of
Princess Martha Coast Princess Martha Coast ( no, Kronprinsesse Märtha Kyst) is that portion of the coast of Queen Maud Land lying between 05° E and the terminus of Stancomb-Wills Glacier, at 20° W. The entire coastline is bounded by ice shelves with ice cliffs h ...
in Queen Maud Land, on the nunatak bare ground area Jutulsessen, at above mean sea level. Troll is completely surrounded by the Antarctic ice sheet and is from the coast. The research station facilities are owned by the Government of Norway through the
Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property The Norwegian Directorate of Public Construction and Property ( no, Statsbygg) is a Norwegian government agency that manages central parts of the real estate portfolio of the Government of Norway. Operation The Norwegian Directorate of Public Co ...
. Operation of the facility carried by another government agency, the Norwegian Polar Institute. The station has a cold and dry climate, being located in a desert. The annual mean temperature is , with the summer temperature able to reach about , and the lowest during the winter at . Storms, which can occur throughout the year, can occasionally make outdoor activity impossible. TrollSat targets satellites in a
polar orbit A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited (usually a planet such as the Earth, but possibly another body such as the Moon or Sun) on each revolution. It has an inclination of abo ...
and consists of a single
radome A radome (a portmanteau of radar and dome) is a structural, weatherproof enclosure that protects a radar antenna. The radome is constructed of material transparent to radio waves. Radomes protect the antenna from weather and conceal antenn ...
with an
low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never m ...
antenna capable of
S band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the conventiona ...
and
X band The X band is the designation for a band of 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 rather indefinitely set at approxi ...
reception. To relay the information, TrollSat has a and a C band uplink to provide 45 
megabit per second In telecommunications, data-transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mul ...
broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
connection to Europe and North America.


References


Bibliography

* * * {{ESTRACK facilities Troll (research station) Princess Martha Coast Earth stations in Norway Earth stations in Antarctica Kongsberg Gruppen Norwegian Space Centre NASA radio communications and spacecraft tracking facilities 2007 establishments in Antarctica 2007 establishments in Norway