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Maspalomas Station

Alternative names	Centro Espacial de Canarias
Organization	INTA (Spain)
Location	San Bartolomé de Tirajana, Province of Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain
Coordinates	27°45′48″N 15°38′03″W / 27.7633°N 15.6342°W / 27.7633; -15.6342
Website	www.inta.es
Location of Maspalomas Station
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Maspalomas Station is an INTA-operated, ESTRACK radio antenna ground station for communication with spacecraft located at the southern area of Gran Canaria island, on the INTA campus. It is situated on the Montaña Blanca hill and is visible from the coastal resort of Meloneras, close to Maspalomas. It was originally established in the 1960s to support NASA's nascent human spaceflight program.

History

From the 1950s the momentum was growing in the Space Race to develop spaceflight. A need arose for an international network of tracking stations around the globe to communicate with satellites and crewed space capsules and to control their flight trajectory. On 18 March 1960, the Spanish and US Governments signed an agreement to establish a NASA satellite ground station on Gran Canaria, the first in Spain. The location was chosen because Maspalomas is on the same latitude as Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, with the two locations separated only by the Atlantic Ocean.

The original Maspalomas Station was built by NASA close to the Maspalomas Lighthouse in 1960. It was initially set to provide support for NASA's first human spaceflight mission, the Mercury Program, one of 14 such stations in the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) distributed around the globe. It came into operation on 13 September 1961 to support the Mercury-Atlas 4 test flight, and continued to take part in Mercury missions, including John Glenn’s Mercury-Atlas 6 Earth orbit. Subsequently, Maspalomas participated in the ground control network for NASA's crewed flight programme Project Gemini (1965-1966).

The expansion of tourism in the southern part of Grand Canaria threatened the radio quiet zone around Maspalomas station. NASA agreed with INTA and the Spanish Government to move operations to a new, more remote site several kilometres away from the original site. The new ground station retained the name of Maspalomas.

Maspalomas Station continued to provide support for international space missions, including the launch of early communications satellites by Intelsat, who named their third satellite, Intelsat II F-3, Canary Bird after the Canary Islands.

Apollo program

Maspalomas Station supported a number of prominent NASA missions, including the Apollo program, the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project and the Skylab space station. For the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first humans on Moon in July 1969, Maspalomas Station acted as one of the receiving station for transmissions from the Apollo crew and relayed them to Houston using an analog link via London. On 16 July, at about sixteen and half minutes into the flight, the station in the Canary Islands acquired a signal from Apollo 11 for several minutes after the loss of signal to the USNS Vanguard positioned in the Atlantic Ocean. Because of its location, Maspalomas was the first ground station to make contact with Apollo spacecraft once they entered orbit.

During the Moon landing on 20 July, Maspalomas provided the real-time backup for the MSFN station at the former Fresnedillas Station, Madrid (now the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex) while the Apollo 11 crew made their first steps onto the Moon.

In October 1969, in recognition of the role played by Maspalomas Station, the Apollo 11 crew visited Gran Canaria as part of their 38-day world tour and stayed at the newly built Oasis Hotel in Maspalomas.

Later missions

After the Apollo Missions, Maspalomas supported a number of other important NASA projects, including the monitoring of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), a set of scientific instruments left by astronauts at the various Apollo landing sites, and the Skylab missions. In 1975, after the end of the Skylab 4 and the Apollo–Soyuz missions, NASA decommissioned Maspalomas Station and most of the functions were transferred to Madrid. Equipment from Maspalomas Station was sent over to the NASA station at Antananarivo, on Madagascar (part of the Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network).

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, ESA began to expand operations in Spain, establishing the Villafranca Station in 1978. Maspalomas Station was reopened in 1979 by the Comisión Nacional de Investigación del Espacio and INTA to provide services for ESA and NASDA (now JAXA) and for programmes such as Hispasat, Helios and the International Cospas-Sarsat Programme.

Facilities

Maspalomas Station holds a 15-metre (50 foot) parabolic antenna which receives S- and X-band and transmits in S-band. The site also has satellite tracking, telemetry, telecommand and radiometry facilities.

The station regularly provides support for missions for the European Space Agency (ESA) via the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, including the Cluster satellite mission, MetOp-2 and the SMART-1 Moon mission.

Maspalomas has also supported other international space projects, among them missions for the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) (including the ETS-VII rendezvous mission); South Korea's Kompsat-2; and the International Satellite System For Search and Rescue, COSPAS-SARSAT.

The facility has been commissioned to support China's forthcoming Chang'e 5 mission to retrieve samples of Moon rock (postponed to 2019).

References

Citations

1. ^ Dorado, José M.; Bautista, Manuel; Sanz-Aránguez, Pedro. "Spain in Space: A short history of Spanish activity in the space sector" (PDF). European Space Agency. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
2. Dickson 2009, p. 101.
3. Gaudio 1995, pp. 70–71.
4. ^ "European Apollo ground station pioneer". European Space Agency. 15 July 2009. Archived from the original on 8 February 2019. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
5. "Day 1, part 2: Earth Orbit and Translunar Injection". Apollo 11 Flight Journal. Retrieved 2019-07-10.
6. Manned Spacecraft Center. Apollo 11: Spacecraft Commentary (PDF). Houston, Texas: NASA. p. 16.
7. ^ Cabañas 2009, p. 83.
8. Lopez, Pedro José Franco (20 July 2014). "De la luna a Maspalomas" [From the Moon to Maspalomas]. La Provincia (in Spanish). Retrieved 9 February 2019.
9. "Apollo 11 Crew Starts World Tour". Logan Daily News. Logan, Ohio. Associated Press. September 29, 1969. p. 1 – via Newspapers.com.
10. ^ "Maspalomas station". European Space Agency. Archived from the original on 8 February 2019. Retrieved 8 February 2019.
11. Jones, Andrew (30 May 2017). "ESA to assist China's Chang'e-5 mission to the Moon and back". GB Times. Retrieved 8 February 2019.

Sources

• Cabañas, Nadjejda Vicente (2009). La cuenta atrás. De la carrera espacial al turismo cósmico [The Countdown. From the Space Race to Cosmic Tourism] (in Spanish). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Gobierno de Canarias D.L. ISBN 9788479475192. OCLC 733850748.
• Dickson, Paul (2009). A Dictionary of the Space Age. Baltimore: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 101 – via EPDF.
• Gaudio, Attilio (1995). Les îles Canaries [The Canary Islands]. KARTHALA Editions. ISBN 9782865375585.

External links

• ESA webpage on ESTRACK, including links to all stations
• ESA/ESTRACK Maspalomas station page
• INTA Maspalomas station page
• Video featuring 360° rotation of a main dish in Maspalomas Station

v t e ESTRACK
Core Network	Europe Redu Station (Belgium) Cebreros Station (Spain) Maspalomas Station (Gran Canaria, Spain) Villafranca Station (Spain) Kiruna Station (Sweden) Santa Maria (Azores, Portugal) South America Kourou Station (French Guayana) Malargüe Station (Argentina) Australia New Norcia Station Perth Station (PITC)
Augmented Network	Svalbard Satellite Station (Norway) Dongara Station (Australia) Troll Satellite Station (Antarctica) Santiago Station (Chile) South Point Station (USA)

v t e Gran Canaria
Category Commons Wikivoyage
Governance	Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands Province of Las Palmas Cabildo insular
Municipalities	Agaete Puerto de las Nieves Agüimes Artenara Arucas Firgas Gáldar Ingenio Mogán Arguineguín Puerto de Mogán Puerto Rico Moya Las Palmas San Agustin San Bartolomé de Tirajana Fataga Maspalomas Playa del Inglés Sonnenland San Fernando San Nicolás de Tolentino Sta. Brígida Sta. Lucía de Tirajana Vecindario Sta. María de Guía Tejeda Telde Teror Valleseco Valsequillo Vega de San Mateo
History	Pre-colonial Conquest of the Canary Islands Battle of Las Palmas Timeline of Las Palmas People from Gran Canaria
Nature	Birds Alvania grancanariensis Gran Canaria blue chaffinch Reptiles Gran Canaria giant lizard Gran Canaria skink Mammals Invertebrates Alvania grancanariensis Maspalomas bow-legged grasshopper
Landmarks and attractions	Ancient sites El Maipés Necropolis Four Doors cave site, Telde Painted Cave, Galdar Caves of Valeron Natural sites Bandama Caldera Fuente de los Azulejos Guayadeque ravine Pico de las Nieves Pilancones Roque Nublo General Jardín Botánico Canario Viera y Clavijo Palmitos Park Church of San Juan Bautista (Arucas) Las Palmas Cathedral Maspalomas Dunes Atlantic Center of Modern Art Museo Canario Elder Museum of Science and Technology Temisas Astronomical Observatory Yumbo Centrum
Transport	Air Gran Canaria Airport Public transport Autoridad Única del Transporte de Gran Canaria Global Guaguas Municipales Tren de Gran Canaria (planned) Roads GC1 GC2 GC31 GC4 GC5 Sea Puerto de la Luz Port of Las Nieves Trasmediterránea Fred Olsen Express
Sport	General Sportspeople CB Gran Canaria Gran Canaria FS Maspalomas FS Rally Islas Canarias BM Remudas Real Club Náutico de Gran Canaria Gran Canaria Maratón Football CD Arguineguín Castillo CF UD Gáldar AD Huracán UD Las Palmas UD Las Palmas Atlético UD Las Palmas C CD Maspalomas CF Panadería Pulido Real Sporting San José UD San Fernando UD Tamaraceite UD Telde UD Vecindario UD Villa de Santa Brígida UD Villa de Santa Brígida B CF Unión Viera Universidad de Las Palmas CF Venues Centro Insular de Deportes Estadio Insular Estadio Gran Canaria Estadio Municipal de Vecindario Gran Canaria Arena
Education and science	Hospital Insular Schools in Las Palmas University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Maspalomas Station
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