The European Space Agency (ESA) has embarked on an ambitious upgrade of its deep space tracking network. By 2018, communications will be possible with some spacecraft at urban fibre optic broadband speeds, a huge improvement on what is now possible.
Currently, ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft communicates at just 228kbps from its orbit around the Red Planet. That’s about 200-450 times slower than many homes can access the internet using fibre optic cables, which run at between 50-100Mbps.
ESA are not building any new antennae. Instead they are modifying their three largest, the 35-metre dishes at New Norcia, Australia, Cebreros in Spain and Malargüe in Argentina. Together with seven smaller stations around the globe, these form part of ESA’s European space tracking (Estrack) network, which was founded 40 years ago
Initially, new coding schemes and modulation of the existing signals will allow ESA’s next Mars mission, the Exomars Trace Gas Orbiter, to communicate 10 times faster than Mars Express.
By 2018, the Estrack dishes themselves will be altered to allow them to use higher frequency radio waves that can carry much more information. ESA’s Euclid space telescope, slated for launch in 2020, will be stationed 1.5 million kilometres away and will download data at 75Mbps.
Beyond this, another upgrade to use cryogenic cooling equipment will squeeze some more capacity out of the network. Then it will be back to the drawing board.
ESA already have designs for arrays of antennas to increase their bandwidth even more for future missions.
• To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Estrack, ESA launched a competition to find the best musical composition that reflected the network. The winning entry, announced yesterday, can be heard here
