A new satellite-tracking ground station will be located adjacent to the Casa Bella student apartment complex on the Brownsville campus as part of STARGATE.
Director of the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy (CARA) Teviet Creighton said while the project will be independent of STARGATE’s Boca Chica Beach facility operations, it is in conjunction with other CARA projects.
“Among the things that we’re doing in STARGATE is exploring new technologies and new techniques both for space communication and astrophysical research and that’s why it falls under the Center for Radio Astronomy,” Creighton said.
According to Creighton, Casa Bella was chosen to be the site of the new project because there was enough space for radio antennas to be installed and a research team will be located inside an apartment that was unoccupied.
“We need the space out in the field so that our antennas will have a clear view of the sky then the apartment at Casa Bella is where, what we call the back end, will be placed,” he said. “The computers and the electronics that take the signals from the antennas and do our digital magic on them to turn it into an actual observatory.”
According to Creighton, the new project will develop a phased array communication system necessary for developments in space technology.
Creighton said a phased array communication system uses multiple antennas rather than a single radio dish to receive communication from satellites in space, thus increasing the number of signals being received.
“By digitally combining the signals coming from each of those antennas, you can create the effect of effectively having a dish that’s as big as your entire array,” he said.
Creighton adds that by using multiple antennas aimed in different directions, signals can be gathered from a larger scope.
Two legacy antennas will be relocated to the new site from the STARGATE Boca Chica Beach facility and an additional 20 are being purchased and will arrive in the next few weeks.
According to the UTRGV website, CARA was the first research unit at UTRGV designated by the UT System because of the development of STARGATE.
STARGATE stands for Spacecraft Tracking and Astronomical Research into Giga-hertz Astrophysical Transient Emission.
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