CFOSat Groud Segment

CFOSAT project is a cooperation between the Chinese space agency (CNSA) and the French space agency (CNES). As a consequence, the CFOSAT ground segment is composed of several major components located in different countries, as illustrated in the following map:

  • the Control Center and the S-band station network, located in China,
  • the French Mission Center, with its two X-band polar stations, located in France, Canada and Sweden,
  • the Chinese Mission Center and its three X-band stations, located in China.
  1. The Satellite Control Center (located in Xi'an) and its Telemetry, Tracking, and Commanding (TT&C) S-band stations network are in charge of operation, control and management of CFOSAT satellite:
    • reception and processing of satellite telemetry data and monitoring of satellite operation status,
    • transmission of commands and uploading of command data in order to control and manage the satellite,
    • tracking, determination and forecast of the satellite orbit (including injection orbit).
  2. The Satellite Mission Center is composed of two independent Mission Centers: the French Mission Center, located in Toulouse and Brest, and the Chinese Mission Center located in Beijing. Both Mission Centers are in charge of:
    • reception of both instruments (SWIM and SCAT) scientific telemetry,
    • processing of both instruments (SWIM and SCAT) scientific telemetry, as well as combined SWIM, SCAT and other instruments telemetry,
    • generating, archiving and dispatching the CFOSAT scientific products to the end users.

Both Mission Centers include expertise centers.


Chinese and French Mission centers have some dedicated requirements:

  • The Chinese Mission Center retrieves scientific telemetry with dedicated X-band station located from North to South of China: Mudanjiang, Beijing, and Sanya. This mission center is in charge of SCAT instrument control, programming and calibration as well as scientific telemetry download management.
  • On the other hand, the French Mission Center is in charge of SWIM instrument control, programming and calibration. The most distinctive requirement of the French Mission Center is the Near Real Time (NRT) requirement: wind and wave products shall be made available at meteorological or oceanographic operational centers within 3 hours from acquisition time. This requirement is mainly achieved by downloading Science telemetry data on polar X-band stations located in Inuvik (Canada) and Kiruna (Sweden) and using a high speed network.
  • The mission center located in Toulouse is mainly focused on SWIM management and SWIM and SCAT NRT products processing and dispatching. The mission center located in Brest is focused on specific and combined products.