Kourou station, also known as ‘Kourou 93’, is located 27 km from the town of Kourou and 90 km from Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana, in South America.
The station site is 19 km from the Centre Spatiale Guyanais (CSG), Europe’s Spaceport. It is used to communicate with Earth-orbiting spacecraft such as XMM-Newton for routine operations, and for the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) – or for backup – for other missions.
Kiruna station is located at Salmijärvi, 38 km east of Kiruna, in northern Sweden. It hosts a 15-m antenna, KIR-1, and a 13-m antenna, KIR-2. Both operate in S-band for uplink and downlink and in X-band for downlink.
KIR-2 features autotrack and program track capability in both S- and X-band.
Both antennas provide routine support for satellites in low-Earth orbits (LEO) during their routine phases, and specialised support during the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP).
Kiruna station is located at Salmijärvi, 38 km east of Kiruna, in northern Sweden. It hosts a 15-m antenna, KIR-1, and a 13-m antenna, KIR-2. Both operate in S-band for uplink and downlink and in X-band for downlink.
KIR-1 features autotrack and program track capability in S-band.
Both antennas provide routine support for satellites in low-Earth orbits (LEO) during their routine phases, and specialised support during the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP).
Redu station is located about 1 km from the village of Redu, in the Belgian province of Luxembourg. The station provides tracking capabilities in S- and Ka-band and hosts multiple tracking antennas operating in a variety of frequency bands to support in-orbit testing (IOT) of telecommunication satellites.
Redu station is equipped with its own emergency electrical power generator system and is connected to the Belgian communication network via fully redundant fibre-optic cables.
The Santa Maria S-band station, also known as ‘Montes das Flores’ (Hill of Flowers), is located 5 km from the town of Vila do Porto on the Portuguese island of Santa Maria, in the Azores.
The station consists of a 5.5-m antenna hard-wired on a stable concrete platform and includes telecommunications equipment, a no-break power system, lightning protection and support infrastructure.