ESA SARAS: Catching signals faster - Video

SARAS – a Spanish acronym for ‘Fast Acquisition of Satellites and Launchers’ – enables ground stations to acquire signals from new satellites faster and more accurately than ever before. 

A circular array of eight small radio-frequency sensors are mounted around the rim of an existing dish antenna. 

It was fitted to the 15 m-diameter dish at ESA’s ESAC Establishment in Spain, seen here during upgrade work, in 2013.

Since then, it has been extensively tested, receiving signals from missions including CryoSat, XMM, and Swarm. 

It also helps the station to acquire signals from multisatellite missions, such as the three-craft Swarm.

ESA Mars Express Audio recording: MSL Broadcasts the sounds of an alien descent

While no human ‘heard’ NASA's Curiosity arrive at Mars this morning, the radio signals transmitted during descent and recorded by Mars Express have been processed and shifted into human-audible frequencies.

This provides a faithful reproduction of the ‘sound’ of the NASA mission’s arrival at Mars and its seven-minute plunge to the Red Planet’s surface.

Melacom audio recording: NASA MSL Descent to Mars Credit: ESA