The Global Educational Network for Satellite Operations (GENSO) was a worldwide network of ground stations and spacecraft which were able to interact via a software standard. The GENSO aimed to increase the return from educational space missions and changed the way that these missions were managed, dramatically increasing the level of access to orbital educational spacecraft.

History

In November 2007, a kickoff meeting was held at the CubeSat workshop. This short presentation (at Aalborg University in Denmark) to the rest of the GENSO groups described work at Cal Poly for the project. This workshop kicked off the Alpha Test phase of the project. The entire project was successfully demoed in front of a live audience (us). The Mission Control Client booked downlink sessions with the Ground Station Server, and the Ground Station Server controlled the radio and rotors at the AAU ground station (across the building). The running Authentication Server authenticated people and registered satellites on the network.

In February 2009, the ROBUSTA project joined the GENSO initiative. ROBUSTA is the first French university CubeSat. The objective of the payload experiment is to measure the radiation induced degradation of electronic devices. Flight data will be compared to the results of a novel prediction method taking into account the Enhanced Low Dose Rate Sensitivity. The second interesting point of this project is that it's a real educational project. Although the system hasn't yet grown to the "hundreds" of ground stations identified in Alexandru Munteanu's Thesis from 2009,Alexandru Munteanu's Thesis testing and integration continue to proceed.

The GENSO project initiated under the guidance of the International Space Education Board (ISEB) has many existing capabilities and is accumulating the interest of large groups inside and outside of the United States. However, it is still lacking a fully equipped ground station that can complement its capabilities.

Since 2011, a great deal of work has been done on Release 1E of GENSO to help make it more user friendly and reliable for the Amateur Radio community. Ground stations like the one at COSMIAC were running 24/7 downloading data for educational satellites such as the University of Michigan RAX-2 spacecraft.

In 2014 the project was described by NASA as "currently on hold, with little expectation of resuming progress". As of 2025 the project is cancelled.

How GENSO worked

The GENSO system was a software networking standard which allowed a user to communicate with a spacecraft by using a remote ground station which has a clear view of the spacecraft. Communications between the client computer (a mission controlcomputer) and the ground station server were conducted across the Internet. There were three major components to the GENSO system : GSS – Ground Station Server MCC - The Mission Control Client was the control station for a satellite. Each satellite would have one MCC. A GSS saw a snapshot of the satellite but only MCC will have the entire picture AUS – The Authentication Server was the server that mediated communication between MCCs and GSSs on the GENSO network. When a ground station wanted to join the network, the AUS permitted them and then assigned them bookings to accomplish. The most recent AUS was located in Vigo, Spain and the backup was at Cal Poly: San Luis Obispo.

There were also three main components that the GENSO system remotely controlled: Rotator Controller Terminal node control Radio Controller

The GENSO software was written in Java. GENSO was developed and maintained under the auspices of the European Space Agency (ESA).

List of members Source: ORGANIZATION (country) COMPONENT (satellite) Aalto University (Finland) GSS California Polytechnic State University (United States) GSS Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) MCC (Delft) ESOC (Germany) GSS ESTEC (Netherlands) GSS Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Space Centre (Switzerland) MCC (SwissCube) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Space Centre (Switzerland) GSS Graz University of Technology (Austria) GSS International Space University (France) GSS Isis Space (Netherlands) GSS MyGroundStations.com (UK) GSS Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Spain) GSS Radio Amateur – G3VZV (UK) GSS Radio Amateur – G4DPZ (UK) GSS Radio Amateur – KA0SWT (United States) GSS Sergio Arboleda University (Colombia) GSS University of Applied Sciences, Heidelberg (Germany) GSS University of Kentucky (United States) GSS University of Montpellier (France) GSS University of New Mexico, Configurable Space Microsystems Innovations & Applications Centre (United States) GSS University of Surrey, Surrey Space Centre (UK) GSS University of Texas at Austin (United States) MCC (FASTRAC 1) University of Texas at Austin (United States) MCC (FASTRAC 2) University of Texas at Austin (United States) GSS University of Valladolid (Spain) GSS University of Vigo (Spain) AUS University of Vigo (Spain) MCC (Test Satellites) University of Vigo (Spain) MCC (Xatcobeo) University of Vigo (Spain) GSS University of York (UK) GSS University of La Reunion, LIM, ESIROI IT Dept (Réunion/France) GSS Stanford Research Institute International & University of Michigan, College of Engineering MCC (RAX-2) University of Michigan (United States) MCC (M-CUBED) Sapienza University of Rome MCC (UniCubeSat-GG) Warsaw University of Technology & Space Research Centre of Polish Academy of Sciences MCC (PW-Sat) Politecnico di Torino (Italy) MCC (E-st@r) Hungary MCC (MaSat-1) IDeTIC-ULPGC (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) (Spain, Canary Islands) GSS

See also AX.25 Packets Antenna Rotator Amsat CNES JAXA NASA Canadian Space Agency SatNOGS

Notes and references

External links GENSO Website GENSO was recently presented in the 2011 August CubeSat Workshop in Logan Utah. Here is the video. GENSO – A Ground Station is a Terrible Thing to Waste by Craig Kief, KE5VSH, [email protected] from AMSAT Journal May/June 2011 AMSAT Article on GENSO PDF of paper GENSO, SPA, SDR, and GNU Radio: The Pathway Ahead for Space Dial Tone Ryan L. Buffington, Craig J. Kief, R. Scott Erwin, Joshua F. Androlewicz, and James Lyke Infotech@Aerospace Conference, Unleashing Unmanned Systems St. Louis, Missouri, 29-31 March 2011 GENSO European Space Agency created and validated it through the GEOID project. Ivo Klinkert (PA1IVO) from the Open Universiteit in the Netherlands describes many of the features and capabilities in his Master Thesis shown here or here GENSO AIAA SpaceDialTone