With the inauguration of the second antenna, the polar site is now ready for operations. The first antenna was inaugurated last April. Among the first services will be support for the first and second generation COSMO-SkyMed satellites, owned by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the Ministry of Defence, and for the NIMBUS and PLATiNO satellites of the IRIDE-FOS project, part of the IRIDE programme, the national Earth Observation infrastructure owned by ASI and developed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA).
The antennas have a diameter of 7.5 metres and are identical to the one inaugurated in July on Santa Maria Island in the Azores. Together with that antenna, and soon the BTS-2 antenna installed at the Fucino Space Centre, they make up Telespazio’s Ground Station Network.
Within the project, Antech was entrusted with manufacturing the antennas, while Telespazio acted as design authority and system integrator, coordinating integration, qualification and commissioning activities with the support of PALS and FMI.
The Finnish site is part of the Polar Station Facility (PSF) programme, through which Telespazio has chosen to invest in a platform that manages both its own and third-party ground infrastructure in an integrated way, connecting them to various control centres under the Ground Station as a Service model. From acquisition planning to S/X-band data distribution, the platform covers every operational phase of a mission, ensuring reliable communications with high data transfer rates.
With the release of the PSF system, scheduled by the end of the year, the network will also include the BTS-2 antenna at the Fucino Space Centre in Abruzzo. Thanks to this distributed network, managed by the Fucino Teleport, Telespazio is able to offer ground station services to both institutional and commercial missions, strengthening its technological and operational capabilities through new opportunities for international collaboration.