|
Svalbard Satellite Station ((ノルウェー語:Svalbard satelittstasjon)) or SvalSat is a satellite ground station located on Platåberget near Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway. Opened in 1997, it is operated by Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT), a joint venture between Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC). SvalSat and KSAT's Troll Satellite Station (TrollSat) in Antarctica are the only ground stations able to download information for all 14 orbits of polar orbiting satellites. The facility consists of 31 multi-mission and customer-dedicated antennas which operate in the C, L, S and X bands. The station provides ground services to more satellites than any other facility in the world. Customers with their own installations include the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The station also reads and distributes data from the Japanese Hinode solar research satellite. The facility has seen a large increase in smaller customers after 2004, when the Svalbard Undersea Cable System started providing a fiber Internet connection. Concessions for downloading is only issued to civilian satellites, yet some data has been indirectly used by armed forces. There is a disagreement as to whether this constitutes a breach of the Svalbard Treaty. ==History== The European Space Research Organization (ESRO) established Kongsfjord Telemetry Station in Ny-Ålesund as one of its four initial European Space Tracking Network stations.〔Kriege and Russo (2000): 59〕 The facility remained in use from 1967 to 1974,〔Øvregard (1996): 330〕 but was closed as it was not suitable for ESRO's second generation of satellites.〔Kriege and Russo (2000): 142〕 During the planning of the station, Longyearbyen had been proposed as a location, and it was largely political concerns by Norwegian authorities to create permanent activity in Ny-Ålesund which lead ESRO to accept the location.〔Røberg and Collett (2004): 14〕 In the 1990s, NSC operated Tromsø Satellite Station (TSS), which was used as a ground station for a limited number of satellites.〔Wormdal (2011): 37〕 After Rolf Skår was appointed director of NSC, plans were launched to try to win the ground station contract for NASA's planned Earth Observing System (EOS). NASA was considering locating the ground station in Greenland, at McMurdo Station in Antarctica or at Esrange in Sweden. Skår invited a NASA delegation to visit Svalbard,〔Wormdal (2011): 38〕 and from 1996 NSC and NASA started negotiating a contract to establish a ground station at Longyearbyen.〔Wormdal (2011): 39〕 Svalbard was chosen because of its high latitude which allows all satellites with an orbit above to use only a single ground station, yet allow downloading from every orbit. For the EOS program, Svalbard was supplemented by Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska. Construction of the road up to Platåberget started in 1996 and a relay station was built to send the data to Isfjord Radio before being sent onwards to a geostationary satellite.〔Wormdal (2011): 40〕 The first installation was an parabolic antenna with S and X band capability. The first satellite to use SvalSat was Landsat 7, which was launched on 15 April 1999. It was followed up by three other EOS satellites: Terra, Aqua and QuikSCAT.〔Wormdal (2011): 41〕 To ensure a sustainable financing of operations, NSC started negotiating with other potential customers. However, the project was rejected by the Indian Space Research Organisation. Instead, a cooperation was made with Kongsberg Aerospace and Defence and Lockheed Martin, who built the second antenna as a joint venture.〔Wormdal (2011): 44〕 In 2001, a German research group applied for permission to establish a ground station in Ny-Ålesund. NSC feared that the competition could undermine the financial capabilities of SvalSat. However, no facility in Ny-Ålesund was built. In 2002, ownership and operations of the facility were consolidated and taken over by the newly created Kongsberg Satellite Services. Lockheed Martin was no longer interested in owning a share of the facility, and sold their shares. NSC and Kongsberg merged their interests in the new company, which also took over TSS.〔 By 2004, six antennas, between in diameter, had been installed.〔 Northrop Grumman and Raytheon decided in 2002 to locate its ground station for National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, the successor of EOS, to Helsinki, Finland, instead of Svalbard. The reason was lack of optical fiber cable connection to the archipelago. NSC took initiative to build such a cable in July 2002 and gained interest from NASA, NOAA and Telenor. The cable was financed by the satellite operators paying the same fee for the transmission of data as they would have to pay for a satellite connection until the cable was paid for. A 40 million United States dollar contract was signed with Tyco International for two cables between Harstad on the mainland and Longyearbyen. Construction started in June 2003 and was completed in January 2004. Starting in 2007, SvalSat was expanded with 12 antennas. Five are used for Galileo, while the remaining are used for a large array of customers. In 2007 and 2008, both Terra and Landsat 7 were hacked twice. The hackers were able to achieve all steps which would have been necessary to take control over the satellites, but did not actually take control. The operation commanded the satellites via SvalSat, which it was able to hack via the Internet connection. In his 2011 book ''Satellittkrigen'', Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation journalist Bård Wormdal argues that SvalSat is used for military intelligence and thus is violating the Svalbard Treaty. Specifically, Wormdal provides evidence that downloaded images of the earth are used for intelligence and military activities. For instance, a Landsat image taken during the Libyan Civil War was sold by the Italian company e-GEOS to the Italian Armed Forces. Similarly, an Technology Experiment Satellite image was sold to the United States Armed Forces during the War in Afghanistan and Arirang-2 images of North Korean installations have been sold to the United States. All three satellites use SvalSat as one of their ground stations. According to Governor Odd Olsen Ingerø, even if a military should indirectly use information downloaded from SvalSat, this would not be a breach of the treaty.〔 A dissertation by Professor Geir Ulfstein concludes that even if a ground station was directly used for downloading military intelligence from military satellites, it would still be permitted by the treaty.〔Ulfstein (1995): 356〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Svalbard Satellite Station」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|