General
- Operated by AMSAT-DL in cooperation with Bochum Observatory
- Diameter: 20m, weight: 140tons
- a 40m high air dome (radome) serves as weather protection
- built 1965
- Ground support for the Apollo missions to the moon
- Propulsion system and RF equipment were renovated in 2003 by AMSAT-DL
- phase-locked receivers (phase-locked) for:
- 2.3 GHz (DSN/ham-radio)
- 5.8 GHz (ham-radio)
- 8.4 GHz (DSN X-Band)
- 10.4 GHz (ham-radio X-Band)
- Reference oscillator: 10 MHz Rb standard, HP Z3801 (GPS-locked)
- Allan deviation approx. 1E-11(tau=100 sec)
- complete RX chain up to baseband phase-locked (phase-locked)
- Reception of VOYAGER 1 on March 31, 2006 at a distance of ~14.7 trillion km (~99AU).
- Regular (24/7) reception operation of the STEREO-A/B space weather beacon since 2009 (in 2013 extended to Turbo Code by AMSAT-DL software) for NASA/NOAA including demodulation and decoding of the data, prior to forwarding the TLM frames to a central server in the USA.
- Coherent transmitter on 2.4 GHz (magnetron, Pout = 6kW PEP, Rb locked phase)
- S-band transmitter (hamradio): 250W PEP
- Planetary radar echoes on 2.45 GHz at the Venus conjunction in 2009 at a distance of 42 million kilometers
- First discovery of ISEE-3 carrier in March 2014, primary downlink receiving station of ISEE-3 recovery operations.
- Deep Space Spacecraft Reception:
- 2001 Mars Odyssey
- Akatsuki (Venus Express, Cassini) and IKAROS
- EMM (Hope Mars Mission)
- Mars Express
- MRO
- Mars Surveyor 98
- New Horizons
- Rosetta
- Tianwen-1
- Ulysses
- Venus Climate Orbiter
- Voyager 1
Performance
- RX: 2.2-2.45 GHz, 8.4 GHz, 10 GHz
- TX: 2.45 GHz (license restricted)
- complete receive path phase-locked with Rb reference and/or GPSDO:
- Allan deviation <1E-11@100 sec
|
Frequency [GHz] |
G/T [1/K] |
3dB beamwidth [deg] |
|
2.4 |
32.6 dB |
0.43 |
|
8.4 |
41.0 dB |
0.124 |
|
10.4 |
42.0 dB |
0.10 deg (estimated) |
- Motor control accuracy: 10″
- Maximum rotation speed: Azimuth 1.25 deg/s, Elevation 0.8 deg/s
- exact location of the Bochum antenna: N51.426990, E7.192566, 159.65m ASL (center of elevation axis).
- Phase center: 50mm (estimated)
Digitizer at ZF:
- USRP (max. 50 MS/s)
- Airspy SDR (max. 10 MS/s)
- HPSDR (max. 384 kS/s)
- Soundcard (48 kS/s)
- 8.4 GHz frequency control ADC 166 kS/s
- CCSDS standard decoder: work in progress
- Internet connectivity: 10Mbit/s upstream, 100 Mbit/s downstream
Control Room
