THE UNITED KINGDOM PROGRAMME FOR THE RECEPTION, ARCHIVING, 
PROCESSING AND DISTRIBUTION OF REMOTELY SENSED DATA 
by 
M J PEARSON 
Royal Aircraft Establishment 
Farnborough, United Kingdom 
1 INTRODUCTION 
The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough, Hampshire is the 
largest Government research and development establishment in the United 
Kingdom and is concerned mainly with work in the aerospace field. The 
Remote Sensing Division of Space Department at the establishment is engaged 
in the acquisition, processing and exploitation of data from remote sensing 
spacecraft for a wide range of applications. To this end the division 
operates ground station and data processing facilities and incorporates the 
National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), which includes the National Point of 
Contact with Earthnet. By these means the division plays a leading part in 
acquiring data from a variety of sources, in the development of advanced 
data processing techniques and in providing a service to users in the 
remote sensing community. To enable full participation in forthcoming 
satellite projects, such as ERS-1, plans are in hand to expand the data 
processing and dissemination facilities and to establish a new satellite 
receiving station; the objective is to set up the infrastructure to enable 
the UK to use remotely sensed data operationally. 
This paper provides a review of the facilities and current activities of 
the Remote Sensing Division and describes some of the preparations being 
made to handle remotely sensed satellite data in the future. 
2 SATELLITE GROUND STATIONS 
2.1 Lasham 
The ground station at Lasham is situated on the edge of an airfield 
approximately 20 miles from Farnborough. 
There are a total of seven receiving antennas on the site, five dishes for 
L-band reception and two VHF antennas. Two 3.7 metre diameter programme 
tracking dish antennas are used for tracking the NOAA and COSPAS series 
spacecraft. A 3.7 metre diameter fixed dish is used for the reception of 
Meteosat Secondary Data User Station (SDUS) low resolution data and a 4.2 
metre diameter fixed dish for Primary Data User Station (PDUS) high resolu- 
tion data, also from the geosynchronous Meteosat.  GOES-E WEFAX low resolu- 
tion data is received with a 4.5 metre diameter fixed dish. Finally there 
are two autotrack VHF receiving antennas, one main and one standby, for the 
reception of the VHF Automatic Picture Transmissions (APT) signals from the 
NOAA-series spacecraft. Either of these can be slaved to the tracking 
System or operated manually. 
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