イリジウム衛星通信を利用した衛星用テレコマシステムの飛行実証

Abstract

The satellite communication system without ground antennas is highly beneficial to ease construction and maintenance of the ground station. To realize it, the Iridium communication service which is consisted of 66 satellites on the LEO (Low-Earth Orbit) is focused. The telemeter and command data are transmitted and received through the Internet, Iridium ground station, and Iridium satellites. Then, only a PC connecting to the Internet is required for the present telecommunication system. To demonstrate this concept, the EGG (re-Entry satellite with Gossamer aeroshell and GPS/iridium) nanosatellite mission was conducted in 2017, which is the first satellite operated via only the Iridium SBD (Short Burst Data) communication. In this paper, the communication performance of the Iridium communication applied to LEO satellite is investigated and the EGG mission result is described. Trajectory-based simulation shows that the present system will function well even under the Doppler shift criteria, though the available time rate will be degraded. Actually, it worked successfully on the EGG mission regardless of the satellite location. Moreover, the telemeter data was acquired in semi-real time manner on the atmospheric-entry phase, which is very difficult for the ordinary ground antenna system. This should be the important feature of the present system.