Swedish Space Corporation adopts Mercury
Date of Story: January 2006 Swedish Space Corporation has recently installed Mercury IP Communications to upgrade and expand voice communications for Esrange Satellite Station in northern Sweden. The Esrange site is an international centre for peaceful exploration of space and works in co-operation with several international space organisations such as ESA, CNES, NASA and JAXA. It is also one of the worlds most northerly launch sites for sounding rockets and stratospheric balloons being located inside the Arctic Circle. The Mercury IP communications system links the satellite station to the main building complex, some 2 km distant, via a V-LAN IP data link. A quantity of 8 key desktop keypanels is used in various operational control positions. In addition to providing communications over the site, Trilogy has provided additional interfaces including 2 wire units to connect with the site’s main telephone PABX and E & M units to link with Cisco routers. Esrange undertook a careful evaluation of various communication solutions available on the market and selected Mercury as the system which best meets there need for high levels of functionality in addition to the ability to be easily expanded and re-configured as operational requirements develop. In such a critical operation, reliability is paramount and the Mercury Interface Unit (MIU) offers high reliability further enhanced by the provision of redundant power supplies. Further details of the Swedish Space Corporation and Esrange can be found at www.ssc.se |