ACE Ground Station Tracking Plot

This display updates every minute. A 48-hour plot is also available.

The display shows the ACE Real Time Solar Wind (RTSW) data received and processed by SWPC as a function of time. It indicates the currency of the ACE RTSW data and the total temporal coverage achieved by the network. Data received from each ground system in the RTSW tracking partnership are displayed in their respective panels with the total tracking coverage shown at the bottom.

The RTSW ground system partnership consists of: National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Tokyo, Japan; Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the United Kingdom; NASA's Deep Space Network (NASA); NOAA's Wallop Command and Data Acquisition (WCDA) station at Wallop's Island, VA; Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Bangalore, India; NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, CO; and the United States Air Force (USAF) stations within the Air Force Space Command Network. UNK (unknown) indicates a new, unassociated tracking station identifier. New identifiers are usually assigned within a few days.

To an observer looking up from the Earth ACE appears to slowly circle the Sun as it follows its orbit around the L1 libration point, about 1.5 million kilometers out from the Earth on the Earth-Sun line. To obtain continuous data from ACE, SWPC relies on a network of ground tracking stations located at various sites around the world. All stations, except for Boulder, use at least a 10 meter diameter parabolic antenna to receive the extremely weak S band radio telemetry signals from the 5 watt transmitter on the ACE spacecraft.

NOAA / Space Weather Prediction Center