Tomorrow, ESA’s 5.5-m Santa Maria station will pick up telemetry signals as Ariane soars some 130 km overhead, set for 12min:28secs after liftoff from Kourou. This will be repeated during Ariane’s second loop around Earth, 104 min:56secs after launch.
ESA’s 15-m Perth station will acquire data starting 144min:13secs after liftoff during the launcher’s second and final orbit.
Ariane 5 with ATV trajectory Credit: Arianespace
The stations will receive crucial telemetry data containing up-to-the-second information on Ariane’s systems such as propulsion, guidance and navigation.
ESA’s ground station engineer Gerhard Billig will be with the team at Santa Maria station, in the Azores, to track the rise of Ariane 5 tomorrow AM. Their operations will start at H0-9:30 (around 20:00CET this evening).
Tomorrow’s activities are largely similar to tracking ATV-2 last year.
Automated Transfer Vehicle page
ATV blog archive
NASA Orion page
NASA Artemis
Airbus Orion page
Discussion: no comments