Kiruna ground station
The Kiruna ground station is a terrestrial radio station of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Salmijärvi, 38 kilometers east of Kiruna in Sweden . It is part of the ESTRACK network of telecommunications stations used by ESA to monitor its satellites and to retrieve telemetry and scientific data.
The station, which is located north of the Arctic Circle , is used for ESA missions in polar orbit such as Integral , SWARM , Sentinel-1A , Envisat or CryoSat-2 , as well as formerly for GOCE . The station is just a few kilometers from the Esrange Space Center , where sounding rockets and balloons are launched.
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The station has two satellite dishes at a height of approx. 400 meters: KIR-1 with a diameter of 15 meters and KIR-2 with 13 meters. Both systems can receive and transmit in the S band and receive in the X band .
In addition, the station has a GPS Tracking and Data Analysis Facility , a service for providing the International GNSS Service in the form of a two-frequency receiver system with geodetic accuracy, which delivers continuous measurements to the ESOC navigation facility.
The ground station is also equipped with a receiver from the Galileo Experimental Sensor Station (GESS), which also provides continuous data to the ESOC.
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Coordinates: 67 ° 51 '25.2 " N , 20 ° 57' 50.4" E