ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
R. Jehn, H. Klinkrad, H. Krag, T. Flohrer and R. Choc
Space Debris Office
ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 1

Observatorio del Teide in Izaña, Tenerife, Spain
OGS
2

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
Overview
• History and Principal Objective
• Technical description
• Observations
• Other interesting applications
• Remote Control (Demonstration by Tim)
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 3

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
History
Idea in the late eighties
Decision to build taken in 1993
MOU between ESA and IAC
signed in Dec 1993
Construction completed in 1996
Inauguration by Spanish royals and former
ESA director of Telecommunications (R.
Collette) on 30 June 1996
First light in 1997
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 4

SILEX Experiment between SPOT4 and ARTEMIS
50 Mbps laser link
5

First Image Transmitted by SILEX
30 November 2001 17:45 Lanzarote,
Canary Islands, in the Atlantic ocean
west of Africa, the first image trans-
mitted via optical intersatellite link
from SPOT4 to ARTEMIS and then
to SPOTIMAGE in Toulouse, France
via ARTEMIS’ Ka-band feeder link
6

The Optical Ground Station (OGS)
7

1-Meter Zeiss Telescope of the OGS
8

Schematic Drawing of the Zeiss-Telescope
Telescope mounting: English mount parallactic
• Primary mirror: ∅ 1016 mm, f/4
Ritchey-Chrétien (RC) system:
• Focal length: 13.3 m, f/13
• Field-of-view: ∅ 45 arcmin
Space debris system plus CCD camera mounted
in Cassegrain focus:
• Focal length: 4.474 m, f/4.4
• Field-of-view: 41 x 41 arcmin
Coudé system:
• Focal length: 39.1 m, f/38
• Field-of-view: ∅ 8 arcmin
9

ESA 1-m Telescope
10

Optical Observations
• ESA CCD Mosaic:
– Mosaic of 4 CCDs
– 2048 x 2048 Pixel
CCDs
– 2 amplifiers/CCD
– total 8 readout
channels
12s readout time
– <5 e- readout noise
– Liquid nitrogen
cooled (few e-/h
dark current)
11

Needles in the Haystack
• Two GEO
Objects
– 19 mag
– ~ 15 cm
diameter
– Automated
on-line
processing
(>120 frames
per hour)
12

Simultaneous Scanning of 2 Declination Stripes
tracking
repositioning sidereal rate
13

OGS Observation Statistics
Repartition of Observation Time
800
Follow-up Observations
700 GTO Surveys
GEO Surveys
600
Observation Hours
500
400
300
200
100
0
Slide 14
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Years
Astronomical Institute University of Bern AIUB

ESA 2006 GEO/GTO Survey
Continuous program, ~80 nights per year
Detections (Jan 2006 - Dec 2006)
200 2
correlated
180 1.8
uncorrelated 40 cm
160 Sensitivity 99 15 cm 1.6
140 1.4
Frequency
Sensitivity
120 60 cm 1.2
100 1
80 0.8
60 correlated 10 cm 0.6
40 0.4
20 uncorrelated 0.2
0 0
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Magnitude
15

ESA 2006 Survey - i vs Ω
Orbital Elements (Jan 2006 - Dec 2006)
22
20
correlated
18 uncorrelated
16
Inclination [°]
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
-180 -120 -60 0 60 120 180
R.A. of Ascending Node [°]
16

i vs Ω 2001
17

i vs Ω 2002
18

i vs Ω 2003
19

i vs Ω 2004
20

i vs Ω 2005
21

New Debris Class
Eccentricity vs Mean Motion (Jan 2002 - Dec 2006; elliptical orbits)
0.8
0.7
0.6
UCT: 621 CT: 100
Eccentricity
0.5
0.4
uncorrelated
0.3 correlated
vapo = 15"/s
0.2 vapo = 10.5"/s
vapo = 7.5"/s
0.1
vapo = 5"/s
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Mean Motion
Slide 22
Astronomical Institute University of Bern AIUB

Area-to-Mass Ratios
Area-to-Mass Ratio (134 Uncorrelated Objects)
60
2
A /m for GEO s/c ~ 0.015 m /kg
50
40
Frequency
30
20
10
0
0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56
Area to Mass Ratio [m2/kg]
Slide 23
Astronomical Institute University of Bern AIUB

Results of the optical observations of the GEO ring
with the ESA Telescope
Aug/Sept Jan – Jul Jan – Dec Jan – Dec Jan – Dec Jan – Dec Jan – Dec
1999 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
GEO GEO GEO/GTO GEO/GTO GEO/GTO GEO/GTO GEO/GTO
Frames 5’400 65’000 81’800 66’000 49’500 59’500 70’000
Scanned Area 895 deg2 11'200 deg2 13'700 deg2 10'600 deg2 7’800 deg2 8’800 deg2 9’800 deg2
Total Obser- 13 nights 82 nights / 96 nights / 88 nights / 70 nights / 85 nights / 95 nights /
vation Time / 49 h 548 h 691 h 559 h 417 h 495 h 580 h
GTO / Follow –/– – / 18 h 200 h / 71 h 245 h/103 h 145 h / 93 h 205 h/141 h 234 h/216 h
Correlated 180 2’023 1738 1121 599 708 808
detections
Correlated 56 448 392 337 266 443 288
objects
Uncorrelated 348 1’587 1676 1195 896 922 1040
detections
24

The Space Debris Problem
1121 known objects in GEO (Dec 2006): tip of the iceberg
25

Reorbiting practices from 1997 to 2007
‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 Total
Left at L1 1 7 5 3 5 1 - 2 1 2 - 27
Left at L2 2 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 - 13
Left at L1/L2 - - - 2 - - - - 1 - - 3
Drift orbit (too low) 6 6 4 2 6 5 7 5 5 7 1 54
Drift orbit (marginal) 1 1 2 3 3 10
Drift orbit (above 275
6 6 4 3 2 3 6 5 8 9 8 60
km)
Total 15 22 15 11 14 11 16 13 19 19 12 167
26

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
Other Interesting Applications of the OGS
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 27

28

QIPS Inter-Island Experiment
29

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
Entanglement-based quantum communication over 144 km
R. Ursin1, F. Tiefenbacher1,2, T. Schmitt-Manderbach3,4, H. Weier4, T. Scheidl1,2,
M. Lindenthal2, B. Blauensteiner1, T. Jennewein2, J. Perdigues5, P. Trojek3,4,
B. Ömer6, M. Fürst4, M. Meyenburg6, J. Rarity7, Z. Sodnik5, C. Barbieri8, H. Weinfurter3,4 and A. Zeilinger1,2
Quantum entanglement is the main resource to endow the field of quantum information processing with
powers that exceed those of classical communication and computation. In view of applications such as
quantum cryptography or quantum teleportation, extension of quantum-entanglement-based protocols to
global distances is of considerable practical interest. Here we experimentally demonstrate entanglement-
based quantum key distribution over 144 km. One photon is measured locally at the Canary Island of
La Palma, whereas the other is sent over an optical free-space link to Tenerife, where the Optical Ground
Station of the European Space Agency acts as the receiver. This exceeds previous free-space experiments
by more than an order of magnitude in distance, and is an essential step towards future satellite-based
quantum communication and experimental tests on quantum physics in space.
1
Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Vienna, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
2
Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
3
Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, D-85748 Garching, Germany
4
Department für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians University, D-80799 Munich, Germany
5
European Space Agency, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands
6
Business Unit Quantum Technology, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, A-1220 Vienna, Austria
7
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1UB, UK
8
Department of Astronomy, University of Padova, I-35122, Italy
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 30

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
High-Precision Tracking Calibration with the
ESA Tenerife Telescope
S. Pallaschke
J. of the Braz. Soc. Mechanical Sciences, 1999
“The ESA Tenerife telescope with its accurate CCD camera
provides a good mechanism to verify the performance of single
station systems and to re-calibrate them, if necessary”
For MARECS positional accuracy of 180 m instead of previously
500 m could be obtained.
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 31

SD-Observations at OGS seen from
software point of view
• Old environment (Sun/Solaris) currently being replaced by PC/Linux
• Key components:
Level-1 Short Term Plans
Controls telescope,
Planning Tool
camera, meteo, data
Off-line planning of
acquisition and storage
space debris surveys
Interfacing to
On-line planning of
hardware components
immediate follow-ups
Time synchronization
by operator
GUI (also for non-SD
users)
Ob
se Processing System
r
Un vati Off-line at AIUB, Orbits
its on determination of orbits
and object properties
On-line at OGS,
identification of follow-
up candidates 32

Level-1 Architecture
L1GUI
L1C
Image Viewer
Telescope Server
Camera Server
Storage Server
User
Planning Tool Adv.
User /
STP
Parser
Remote link: Sequence ModeCommands
Remote link: High Priority Commands
User Interaction
File / Pipe link
33
Shared Memory link

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 34

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 35

ESA’s Optical Ground Station at Tenerife
Acknowledgements
Walter Flury
Zoran Sodnik
Thomas Schildknecht
Jyri Kuusela
Andrea Kerruish
OPS-G Forum, 18 January 2008 36