GNSS Satellite Positioning and Navigation Group (GNSS-SPAN)

LEO POD at Ginan Software!

GNSS-SPAN has signed a collaborative agreement with Frontier SI, Geoscience Australia, and the University of Newcastle to develop the feature of precise orbit determination (POD) for the LEO satellites at Ginan software. This will help the Ginan users to perform the state-of-the-art kinematic and reduced-dynamic POD for LEO missions, including GRACE-FO, Sentinel, COSMIC-2, Spire CubeSats, etc. The precise orbits are required for various applications such as satellite gravimetry, altimetry, InSAR, radio occultations, LEO PNT, space rendezvous and docking.

From the GNSS-SPAN group, Dr Amir Allahvirdi-Zadeh and Prof. Ahmed El-Mowafy will work on this project.

TOP 250 RESEARCHERS: Curtin University’s Peter Teunissen is first in two research fields

Curtin University senior professor Peter Teunissen has seen the field of satellite technology expand at a phenomenal rate over the past few decades.

Today, dependence on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) has penetrated all levels of society, says Teunissen, who is named in The Australian’s 2021 Research magazine as Australia’s top research in two fields — in geophysics and in radar, positioning, and navigation.

“A lot of research at the moment is focused on the next generation of GNSS satellites; one segment is looking at lower-cost satellites, such as CubeSats,” he says. “The CubeSats really are the future for increasing the number of satellites and constellations because even students, of course with proper supervision, are able to design satellites and then they can be launched with a much lower budget.”