Launcher Tracking Support from ESTRACK

Launcher tracking support implies vehicle telemetry reception and distribution and is indispensable for flight safety and accurate spacecraft separation. Technical and operational challenges are the uncertainty of launcher trajectory dispersion for acquisition, the high speed pointing target of the launcher, autotrack diversity operations on two different frequencies, synchronous telemetry data reception, real-time telemetry processing and distribution. ESA’s Tracking Station Network (Estrack) was up-graded to support with dedicated stations the tracking of Ariane-5, Soyuz and Vega. Therefore, a new station on the Island of Santa Maria, Azores, Portugal was developed for Ariane-5 mission support and an existing ESA 15m antenna in Perth, West Australia was up-graded even to feature launcher tracking and satellite first acquisition simultaneously. Several launches have been supported successfully since then.