Global Educational Network for Satellite Operations

The Global Educational Network for Satellite Operations (GENSO) is forming by a worldwide network of ground stations and spacecraft which can interact via a software standard. The GENSO aims to increase the return from educational space missions and changed the way that these missions are managed, dramatically increasing the level of access to orbital educational spacecraft.

History


In November 2007, a kickoff meeting was held at the CubeSat workshop. This short presentation (at Aalborg University in Denmark) to the rest of the GENSO groups described work at Cal Poly for the project. This workshop kicked off the Alpha Test phase of the project. The entire project was successfully demoed in front of a live audience (us). The Mission Control Client booked downlink sessions with the Ground Station Server, and the Ground Station Server controlled the radio and rotors at the AAU ground station (across the building). The running Authentication Server authenticated people and registered satellites on the network.

In February 2009, the ROBUSTA project joined the GENSO initiative. ROBUSTA is the first French university CubeSat. The objective of the payload experiment is to measure the radiation induced degradation of electronic devices. Flight data will be compared to the results of a novel prediction method taking into account the Enhanced Low Dose Rate Sensitivity. The second interesting point of this project is that it's a real educational project. Although the system hasn't yet grown to the "hundreds" of ground stations identified in Alexandru Munteanu's Thesis from 2009, testing and integration continue to proceed.

The GENSO project initiated under the guidance of the International Space Education Board (ISEB) has many existing capabilities and is accumulating the interest of large groups inside and outside of the United States. However, it is still lacking a fully equipped ground station that can complement its capabilities.

Since 2011, a great deal of work has been done on Release 1E of GENSO to help make it more user friendly and reliable for the Amateur Radio community. Ground stations like the one at COSMIAC are now running 24/7 downloading data for educational satellites such as the University of Michigan RAX-2 spacecraft.

How GENSO works
The GENSO system is a software networking standard which allows a user to communicate with a spacecraft by using a remote ground station which has a clear view of the spacecraft. Communications between the client computer (a mission controlcomputer) and the ground station server are conducted across the Internet. There are three major components to the GENSO system :
 * GSS – Ground Station Server
 * MCC - The Mission Control Client is the control station for a satellite. Each satellite will have one MCC. A GSS will see a snapshot of the satellite but only MCC will have the entire picture
 * AUS – The Authentication Server is the server that mediates communication between MCCs and GSSs on the GENSO network. When a ground station wants to join the network, the AUS permits them and then assigns them bookings to accomplish. The current AUS is located in Vigo, Spain and the backup is at Cal Poly: San Luis Obispo.

There are also three main components that the GENSO system remotely controls:
 * Rotator Controller
 * Terminal node control
 * Radio Controller

The GENSO software is written in Java. GENSO was developed and is currently maintained under the auspices of the European Space Agency (ESA).

List of members
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