South Korean satellite uses navigation receiver from RUAG Space

Photo: RUAG Space

On March 20, a South Korean Earth Observation satellite will be sent to space, carrying a navigation receiver from RUAG Space to determine the satellite’s position in orbit. The Earth Observation satellite is being launched by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), South Korea’s space agency.

The precision single-frequency low Earth orbit GNSS receiver, called LEORIX, is a GPS + Galileo receiver from RUAG Space’s new generation of receivers.

More than 80 RUAG Space receivers of the latest generation (LEORIX for Low Earth Orbit, GEORIX Geostationary Orbit and PODRIX) have been ordered by customers in Asia, Europe, Middle East and the United States. They will be launched for various low and geostationary Earth Orbit missions within the next few months and years.

Currently, 22 navigation receivers from RUAG Space are in orbit. The satellite CAS-500-1 will be launched aboard a Russian Soyuz-2 launch vehicle from the spaceport in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

After the launch of CAS-500-1, South Korea plans to send the CAS500-2 satellite to space. A launch date of this second mission is not yet defined. The CAS500-2 mission also will fly with a LEORIX receiver from RUAG Space. The satellite builder — Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) — already has received the space-borne navigation receiver.

PODRIX in Space

Since November 2020, two new Precise Orbit Determination Receivers (PODRIX) from RUAG Space have been in orbit. They determine the position of ocean-monitoring satellite Sentinel-6.

The PODRIX GNSS spaceborne receiver achieves a very high, real-time in-orbit accuracy of the satellite’s position in orbit from below one meter to a few centimeters using on-ground post-processing. The high accuracy is achieved through simultaneously processing of multi-frequency signals from GPS and Galileo.

PODRIX GNSS spaceborne receivers are built on the experience of the more than 20 GPS-only receivers of the RUAG Space legacy receiver generation now in orbit.

The receivers precisely determine the position of a satellite once in orbit, which improves the satellite’s performance. Sentinel-6 measures the sea level on a global scale with unprecedented accuracy, which is crucial for climate change research. Every millimeter or centimeter in further precision highly improves the performance of the mission. The more precise the Sentinel-6 spaceborne GNSS receiver from RUAG Space works, the more precise are the data of this climate mission.

RUAG Space is a supplier to the space industry in Europe, and has a growing presence in the United States. It develops and manufactures products for satellites and launch vehicles, playing a key role both in the institutional and commercial space market. RUAG Space is part of RUAG International, a Swiss technology group focusing on the aerospace industry.