RazakSAT™ ground system consists of Mission Control Station (MCS) and Image Receiving and Processing Station (IRPS).

Pusat Angkasa Negara (PAN) or National Space Centre Ground Station of ANGKASA situated in Banting, Selangor will be the main MCS and IRPS for RazakSAT satellite imagery. The MCS will perform mission plan, command generation, telemetry receiving as well as archiving and analysis. IRPS will archive images together with attitude and ephemeris telemetry data for post processing and distribution.

The MCS plans and operates the entire space mission, including the configuration and scheduling of resources for both space and ground elements. It also monitors and commands the satellite. MCS consists of two subsystems: Antenna & RF subsystem and Telemetry & Commanding subsystem. The MCS uses S-band uplink for telecommands and S-band downlink for telemetry reception. MCS baseband and Telemetry & Commanding equipment for RazakSAT will be incorporated into ANGKASA’s antenna and RF facilities.




Image Receiving and Processing Station (IRPS) receives image data from the satellite via X-band link. IRPS can be categorized into three main subsystems which are Antenna & RF Subsystem (ARS), Receiving & Archiving Subsystem (RAS) and Search & Processing Subsystem (SPS).

The Antenna & RF Subsystem performs tasks like satellite tracking, receiving RazakSAT signals via X-band link, demodulating and bit synchronizing RazakSAT signals. Receiving & Archiving Subsystem will ingest the demodulated and bit-synchronized signals to the receiving and archiving server, records signal into disk arrays and perform real-time image display. The Search & Processing Subsystem will generate the image products and catalogues, manage image data and database, generates schedule for new imaging and provide web service for catalogue browsing.

Images will also be received by the Malaysian Ground Receiving Station (MGRS), Temerloh of Remote Sensing Malaysia which will carry out data distribution for RazakSAT images.

Sources:
M.Y. Norhan and H. Norhizam, “The Role of RazakSAT in Remote Sensing” GIS Development Magazine, Jun 2006, pp.26.
K. Nuril, A. Shamsul, O. Firdaus, “The Development of RazakSAT Ground System” MRSS 2008.