An Italian Ground Station for the NASA-Led SWIFT High Energy Astrophysics Mission

Swift is a MIDEX class NASA-led mission devoted to Gamma Ray Burst Astrophysics by means of a multiple payload sensible to wavelengths ranging from optical to soft/hard X- rays. The principal asset of the mission is a rapid reaction to GRB events powered by on board positioning and slewing capabilities with unp recedented “swiftness†which allow to probe and measure these events since 100 s after th eir first appearance in the sky. Swift has been successfully launched on November 20th 2004 fr om the KSC (FL, USA) into a 600 km circular orbit with 21° inclination. Italy and the UK are NASA partners for this endeavour. In particular, the Italian contribution includes th e provision of the mission Ground Station of Malindi (Kenya) as well as the link connecting t he Ground Station to the Mission Operation Centre in the USA. Since the launch the s tation is serving every pass of Swift relaying TLCs and acquiring TLM from the S/C in S-b and. The MOC, located at the Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA, U SA) is connected to the station by means of the operation network of the Italian Space Agenc y (ASI-net) through the gateways of JSC (Houston, TX, USA) and Fucino (Italy). Within this scenario real time TLM and TLC for Swift are “on line†relayed to the MOC while mass m emory TLM is delivered “off line†. In this respect the ASI S-band Ground Station in Malin di has been updated in order to comply with Swift characteristics but also with the aim of evolving toward a multiantenna/multisatellite facility. During the fi rst 14 months of Swift operation the station has served about 5300 passes displaying an efficien cy level in excess of 99,5 %. This paper accounts for the main aspects of this ASI/NASA “cro ss support†as well as for the technical details of the updating of the facility. This is th e first opportunity that an ASI Malindi Ground Station has to support a NASA-led scientific mission and represents a reference model for planning future collaborations involving this site.