Constellator™-proven-best-and-only-for-Geostationary-orbit
Constellator™-proven-best-and-only-for-Geostationary-orbit
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Our customer successfully launched a geostationary satellite following a highly elliptic Transfer Orbit, using the multi-trajectory and hardware-in-the-loop capabilities of our Constellator GNSS simulator.
Constellator™-proven-best-and-only-for-Geostationary-orbit
Constellator™-proven-best-and-only-for-Geostationary-orbit
Share this article !
Our customer successfully launched a geostationary satellite following a highly elliptic Transfer Orbit, using the multi-trajectory and hardware-in-the-loop capabilities of our Constellator GNSS simulator.

Constellator™: Space proven with a tough case in GEO

Our customer successfully launched a geostationary satellite following a highly elliptic Transfer Orbit, using the multi-trajectory and hardware-in-the-loop capabilities of our Constellator GNSS simulator.

He could measure good performances of the RF signals generated by Constellator and noted a good tracking at the spaceborne GNSS receiver side.

These performances were achieved even during the high elliptical transfer orbit up to geostationary one.

Constellator™ transmitted RF signals to the Spaceborne GNSS Receiver with the expected quality levels, from launch and early orbit phases up to the geostationary station through a rather elliptical transfer orbit.

Thanks to Constellator™, the spaceborne GNSS receiver worked perfectly: our customer recognized Constellator as the most efficient equipment on the market and highlighted its RF quality even in high dynamics conditions :

Constellator™ has therefore been proved to be the only reliable solution for GEO on the market as the satellite accurately reached its geostationary trajectory as simulated by hardware-in-the-loop tests.

Simulation you can trust, even in GEO, how does it work:

GNSS simulation for launching a satellite into geostationary orbit has always been a challenge and is an extreme use case for GNSS test equipment.

Several aspects of geostationary trajectories make it one of the most difficult use case:

  • Very few numbers of GNSS satellites are in view of the antenna(s) of a spaceborne GNSS Receiver in geostationary orbit
  • The antennas of the GPS satellites emit to the Earth and not to the GNSS receiver which is in a Geostationary orbit (i.e. above)
  • The effects of the ionosphere’s shrinking cross (« double-crossing »)
  • Sun/Moon effects which are the main destabilizing effect of geostationary orbits.

 

Constellator™ has been designed from the ground up to meet those extreme requirements:

  • With up to 660 software channels to handle multi-frequency, multi-constellation
  • Models including:
    – handling double ionosphere crossing,
    – side lobes simulation
    – based on JGM3 Earth gravity model up to the 40th order
    – atmospheric drag with custom ballistic coefficient
    – Sun/Moon 3rd body effect
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