Our next talk in our Geo Colloquium series:

Andreas Dielacher, Beyond Gravity, opens an external URL in a new window
PRETTY – GNSS-Reflectometry on CubeSats from Idea to the first data from Space
Monday, June 10, 2024, at 09:00 in Sem.R. DA grün 02 A (Freihaus, 2nd floor, access via yellow area)

Abstract:
The idea of using Signals of Opportunity (SooP), especially GNSS signals comes from the 1990s. It was proposed first by Manuel Martin-Neira (1993). Beyond Gravity Austria was involved in some of the first activities to build an actual space-borne instrument (starting 2001 with a study, but only continued in 2013 with the development of the PARIS correlator unit, PACO). Since then, it was an up and down with various studies in parallel, but the one with Technical University of Graz, PACube, where the initially developed FPGA core was ported to their platform started to form the PRETTY satellite. It was then, when Beyond Gravity Austria also started the development of the software for the reflection point and generation of data packets, hence the complete payload. Nevertheless, it took until 2017 for the PRETTY Phase B study to start and until 2020 for Phase C. During that time a lot has changed on the GNSS+R sector, and also some unforeseen events happened which forced us to change from the initial and well researched L1 GNSS+R to change the frequency to L5. Finally in October 2023 the PRETTY CubeSat was launched into orbit and on 15. February 2024, we have seen the first light from the instrument. The talk will give background on GNSS+R, show the limitations from the early projects and also the ones one CubeSats and will finally present the first light. However, this does not mean the journey is over but it rather begins ...