From Ground to Orbit: Redesigning a Ground Station for Automated Nanosatellite Communications

From January 13 to June 20, 2025, I completed an internship within the CENSUS team at the Paris Observatory – PSL. The mission: redesign and reimplement the software architecture of the Meudon ground station (SSOL) to make it automatable, portable, maintainable, and integrable into the SatNOGS network.

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Four requirements guided the work: cross-platform compatibility, easier isolation and maintenance, reproducible installation, and long-term robustness. Concretely, the mission involved integrating an operational SatNOGS client, automating its installation with an Ansible playbook, and containerizing the whole environment with Docker to ensure portability and reproducibility.
I adopted a progressive approach: understanding the context and prior work, upskilling (Docker, SDR++, GPredict, GitLab), then iterative implementation (Python/Bash development, testing, documentation). I structured the project on GitLab, wrote user guides, and automated deployment so the station can be easily installed and restored from the repository.