Development of Technology for Monitoring Animal Migration on Earth Using Scientific Equipment on the ISS RS

Abstract

One of the important problems in studying processes on the Earth has to do with monitoring animal migrations. ICARUS equipment installed in ISS RS supports global animal migrations monitoring from space. The ICARUS equipment was developed under the Cooperation Agreement between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the state corporation Roscosmos (hereinafter referred to as the Agreement). Under this agreement the Russian space experiment Uragan is combined with the German project ICARUS (International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space). The ICARUS equipment is a system consisting of the onboard and ground segments. The onboard segment includes the control computer OBC-I (OnBoard Computer ICARUS), intended for data storage and processing, and the antenna unity which provides transmission of trajectory data on the ISS spatial position to miniature transceiving sensors (tags) attached to the animals that are being monitored, as well as reception of data from the tags about coordinates of the movement of birds and animals during their seasonal migration. The ground segment includes multiple small (with the mass of up to 5 g) transceivers (tags) which are attached on the ground to migrating animals and birds. These tags may also record additional sensor information such as 3D-body acceleration, 3D-magnetometer data, temperature, pressure and humidity. Some data from the tags will be transmitted on a daily basis to the Mission Control Center in Moscow (MCC-M) via high-rate data link of the radio data transmission system to be further passed on to user centers in Germany and Russia. Most recorded sensor data will be stored on the tag memory for terrestrial readout using handheld receivers on the ground.