The project SatNOGS (Satellite Open Ground Station) is free software and open source hardware platform destined to create a network of satellite ground stations.
The scope of the project is to create a complete stack of open technologies based on open standards and building a complete ground station as a stack showcase.
SatNOGS aims to be a platform optimized for modularity, built from available and affordable tools and resources.
About SatNOGS
This project started in mid-April 2014, during the NASA hackathon Space App Challenge at hackerspace.gr.
After that initial work, the SatNOGS team participated in the first iteration of the Hackaday Award and won the first place, what gave them a big boost (both in terms of resources and community) to start the Libre Space Foundation.
Initially, SatNOGS had as its main focus the recovery of signals from LEO satellites on the UHF and VHF bands.
SatNOGS can retrieve status signals and telemetry, payload data (experiments) of scientific and research satellites (eg magnetospheric experiments), meteorological data, etc.
SatNOGS has the design and a global management interface (SatNOGS Network) to facilitate the operations of multiple ground stations remotely.
An observer can take advantage of the complete network of SatNOGS ground stations around the world.
Features of the SatNOGS project
As mentioned at the beginning, SatNOGS aims to provide a stack of technologies required for a distributed network of satellite ground stations in low Earth orbit.
To implement such a stack, the following four subprojects are developed:
Red
SatNOGS Network is a web application for scheduling observations through the ground station network.
By maintaining a modular architecture based on network communications, remote access is guaranteed and the interchangeable design that meets all possible needs.
Confidential Information
The SatNOGS database is a multisource app that allows users to suggest satellite transmitter information for currently active satellites. Your data is available through an API.
Client
SatNOGS Client is software that runs on ground stations, usually on embedded systems, which receives the scheduled observations from the network, receives the satellite transmission, and sends it back to the network web application.
Ground station
SatNOGS Ground Station is an open source hardware ground station instrumentation with a rotator, antennas, electronics and is connected to the Client. It is based on 3D printed components and readily available materials.
The peculiarity is that everything is open source and the project includes all the necessary elements for the reception of the data, including the design of the antennas and their motorization (requires a 3D printer), but also the decoding and aggregation of the data.
Simply put, SatNOGS provides the community with a wide variety of open source tools to obtain data from all those satellites.
The core of this project is the community of radio amateurs, Space enthusiasts, satellite operators, programmers, gathered around a simple idea: "Outer space open and accessible to all."
How to start my SatNOGS project?
All software (network, satellite database, client and other tools) hardware (antenna rotation with parts and 3d printed electronics) needed to get data from all satellites are available on GitLab.
As for the the official website of the project you can also find excellent documentation on how to get started if you want to create your own project, where construction is detailed step by step.
In addition to the implementation of the software (client) on your Raspberry Pi.
The satNOGS community continues to grow and today, there are more than 60 ground stations in the production environment and many more in the development environment.