The McMurdo Ground Station (MGS): ready for SAR acquisition

The McMurdo Ground Station (MGS), a satellite receiving facility on Ross Island, Antarctica, was installed in December 1994 by the Ground Networks Division of NASA in concert with the Office of Polar Programs of NSF. Its original purpose was to acquire synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from the Canadian RADARSAT spacecraft, which was launched in November 1995. To test the system, SAR data from the European ERS-1 spacecraft was successfully acquired by MGS in January 1995 and processed at the Alaska SAR Facility (ASF). The role of the MGS has expanded to include other SAR missions, and its first major role is to support the ERS-1 and ERS-2 tandem mission. The tandem mission should collect three complete coverages of the McMurdo mask during the first half of 1996. In late spring MGS will start receiving and recording SAR data from RADARSAT. Data recorded in summer is expected to be shipped every two weeks; all winter data will be shipped on the first flight out in the spring. Electronic transfer of the data out of the Antarctic is desirable, but the large quantity of data-as much as 30-40 GBytes per day-makes this a challenge. Efforts to develop such a capability continue.