A brief summary of ESA's primary telecommunications tracking station, at Redu in Belgium.

The video contains:

00:19 Introduction

01:00 Redu is one of ESA most important ground stations. In addition to it basic Telemetry, telemetry and ranging facilities it has comprehensive testing and monitoring facilities for communication satellites and it is the control centre for ECS-1, ECS-2, ECS-4 and ECS-5. Very nice video footage of REDU ground station from the air.

01:38 Picture of ground station with all antennas marked with their function.

01:45 Ariane launch, from Kourou, of an ECS satellite and putting it into the final orbit.

02:25 Redu control centre 1st role is for the tracking and commanding of the satellites in this initial phase, and relay data to ESOC.

02:44 Screens of satellite monitoring from control centre, and ground stations operation

03:17 Redu 2nd role is to test the satellite right after launch and before going into operational service, performing the so called in-orbit-testing.

03:42 Animation of a telecommunication satellite in orbit with illustration of the different footprints, the areas covered by telecommunication signals. It is Redu’s tasks to check that these footprints cover the designed areas, only and correctly, and that the satellite can handle the communication traffic.

03:58 Redu static terminal with large antenna is shown with small mobile terminals, each with small antennas, to carry out this operation.

04:07 A satellite dish of 13.5m diameter which can both transmit and receive from the monitoring room in Redu.

04:24 The transportable stations are taking to what is theoretical the edge of the footprints.

04:38 Image illustrating this test scenario.

04:41 Redu ground station seen from the air. Following testing Redu will pass the satellite to Eutelsat to rent out the communication satellite transponders to customers.

04:58 Map of different back-up ground stations.

05:13 Redu big 13.5 m antenna from above. Redu has all its electrical systems secured with back-up power supply systems.

05:32 Animation of the Earth seen from far away with a satellite; then the view of the satellite with its beam towards the Earth.

05:53 Redu has VHF facilities to communicate with satellites with are no longer pointing to the Earth for communicating with ground stations. Image of VHF antenna.

05:59 Animation: Satellite illustrated to point away from the Earth, and the satellite is re-orientate the satellite towards the Earth.

06:09 Redu control room from where the 3rd very important role of Redu is done: the monitoring and control of the ECS satellites. These satellites are now in normal services providing TV-transmissions, telephone services, data services, and these satellites are monitoring 24hours, a day 65 days a year.

06:43 Each satellite has its one satellite disc pointing towards it all the time. The different equipment and antennas used are shown.

07:13 VHF antenna for transmitting command signals to the satellite. SHF is used to receive telemetry signals from the satellite. The advantage of using VHF to transmit is that one wide band antenna can cover all four satellites at a time. Animated illustration.

07:33 Control room illustrating normal operation and adjustment of the satellites.

07:50 Antenna used for this activity

08:01 Redu is totally autonomous for orbit determination and for the implementation of the manoeuvres required for maintain the satellites in the plus-minus one degree box in north-south, east-west directions.

08:17 Nice view of SHF and VHF satellite dish antennas at Redu. All these operations along with several others such as thermal control, payload reconfiguration and eclipse operation are carried out as a routine.

08:40 Since launch of ECS-1 in 1983 all satellite operation has been carried out with no interruption, enabling satellites in providing transmission of TV5, Super Channel and RAI.

09:30 The end