Spacecraft Doppler tracking with a VLBI antenna

Abstract

Preliminary results are reported from Doppler-shift measurements to the Voyager-2 spacecraft at a distance of 26 AU, obtained using the 32-m VLBI antenna at Medicina (Italy) during July and August 1988. The apparatus comprises the el-az antenna, an S-X-band receiver, a hydrogen maser to generate the reference signal, a Mark III VLBI terminal, and a digital tone extractor capable of isolating a tone of known frequency from a noisy signal and giving its phase and amplitude. A signal transmitted in S-band from the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) station in Australia and retransmitted coherently in X-band by Voyager, was received 7 h 6 min later at Medicina and at the DSN station in Madrid. Sample data are presented graphically and shown to be of generally high quality; further in-depth analysis is under way.