Dispatching technology

Launching a rocket that will loft an ESA satellite into orbit requires years of experience, consummate skill and top technology – as well as a ‘black box’ dispatched from ESOC.

For each launch, teams at the ESOC's GSRF prepare, configure and test a Network Data Interface Unit (NDIU), then deploy it to the launch site (such as Europe’s Spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, or Plesetsk, Russia). But the NDIU isn’t really ‘black’ and it’s much bigger than a box.

In fact, it’s a portable, high-tech ‘gateway’ comprising a rack of signal processors, radio interface terminals and data modulators. It is deployed to the launch site and connects to the satellite through an umbilical cable (which is dropped just a few minutes before liftoff), as well as to ESOC via regular telecom lines.

It provides a crucial data link between the satellite nestled on top of the rocket, which ‘thinks’ it’s talking to its ground station via its radio antenna (just like it will from orbit), and the mission control system running at ESOC.

With the NDIU in place, the flight control team can connect the mission control system to the satellite and perform final technical and data-flow checks and set the satellite’s pre-launch configuration right up to the last minutes before liftoff.

Here is an NDIU deployed in Baikonur for Cluster launch in 2000.

More information

Notes on how an NDIU was used for MSG-4 launch in 2015