How to make voice contact? Step 1. Antennas.

amroldan

Guía de contacto con la ISS en voz:

We are going to try to explain how to make voice contact once ARISS assigns a time-window to us.

In the previous section, we have explained how to ask for a time-window, equipment, etc. Now we are going to focus on how to make communication possible.

In ARISS web-page they suggest two ways to transmit through the ISS: direct and telebridge contact.

  • Direct contact: The contact with ISS is done during the pass of the station over our localization.
  • Telebridge contact: ARISS has a dozen of dedicated “telebridge” ground stations covering the world. In this case, radio contact with ISS is established during the pass of the ISS over one of the ARISS “telebridge” stations and the signals are relayed per telephone line.

The pros and cons.:

Direct contact is clearly the difficult one, because the whole equipment (radio equipment, antenna equipment, etc.) is needed. Furthermore the waiting time is about 2 years. However, this method is very challenging and interesting for engineers students like us.

Telebridge contact allows to communicate with ISS staff without the economical cost of the direct contact. In this case, the waiting time is about 1 year, but we think that it is not an engineering challenge. 

Then, we will contact directly through radio link using the ground station of GranaSAT, besides we’ll manage the radio link of the cubesat.