By Sean McClinton, Business Operations Manager, RBC Signals
When most people think of space, they think of things like astronauts, rockets, and planets, and for good reason. These are the most visible aspects of space exploration and development. When we use our mobile phones to make calls or receive data, we don’t often think about the cell tower, except maybe when we’re not getting enough bars. Ground stations are like the cell towers of space exploration, oft-overlooked but critically important.
We are at a stage of space exploration and development where we’re not just sending things into space for the sake of sending them anymore. We send them up there to create value for others, and without a ground station, almost no value can be generated from space for the betterment of humanity. Ground stations help us do things like communicate with astronauts in space, see images that spacecraft in orbit have taken of our beautiful planet, and to better understand the space environment and how to navigate it. Many more spacecraft are being sent into space almost every day as the cost of launch comes down and technology improves. Our population and resource utilization are expanding every day, and in order to better understand how to take care of our planet, how to navigate it, and how to prosper on it, we not only need this data, but we need to be able to make sense and act on it as quickly as possible.
In the future, if you imagine the world of Blue Origin’s Founder Jeff Bezos of “Millions of people living and working in space,” it’s easy to see how critically important ground stations will be not only to derive value from our activities, but to be able to function at all. The International Space Station orbits the Earth many times a day, every day, whether we think about it or not. It’s continuously inhabited by humans and without a ground station to communicate to, the ISS would be one lonely place to be.
Next time you look up at the night sky, whether just for fun or based on a more serious interest, think about all those ground stations out there communicating with the ever increasing amount of spacecraft in orbit and remember the critical role they are playing and will continue to play in our future in and with space.