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Updated: 07 Mar 2005 What is TERSS? | |
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TERSS is the Tasmanian Earth Resources Satellite Station, a collaborative project which involved several major Australian organisations in the initial design and building of Australia's second Earth resources satellite ground station. All of these organisations, excepting the Australian Space Office, form the TERSS Board of Management for overseeing the operation of the ground station. (see below for the history of the TERSS Project) The ground station is comprised of an antenna (see photo, left) and associated front-end electronics located in the University of Tasmania property on Droughty Hill, an area on a peninsula at the mouth of the Derwent River about 10 kilometres from Hobart, Tasmania. (see images below) |
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The antenna communicates via a microwave link to the Data Acquisition and Control System (DACS) (left), located at the CSIRO Marine Research facility, in Hobart. A new demodulator (shown left) has been installed that supports downlinks from Landsat 5, Landsat 7, as well as ERS 1 and 2 and Radarsat 1. |
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The satellite data is transmitted at bit-rates up to 150 Mbps to the DACS, where captured data is archived onto Digital Linear Tape (DLT) in a computer readable format. During this process the data is frame synchronised, word-aligned and a catalogue of the data is extracted (both metadata and browse imagery) then delivered to the ACRES digital catalogue server for immediate world-wide access via the Internet. Click on the links below to obtain further information. | |