Global Receive Antenna and Signal Processor (GRASP)

Principal Investigator: Robert Carlson
Affiliation: JAMSS America, Inc.
Global Receive Antenna and Signal Processor (GRASP) is an enabling technology facility that provides affordable recovery of terrestrial radio frequency (RF) data using the ISS. Remote RF data is vital to commercial entities, governmental entities, and the research community for reasons as diverse as tracking ships at sea, studying animal migrations, improving agricultural yields, and monitoring the health of assets and health of the environment. The GRASP facility consists of an internally-mounted signal processing unit and an externally-mounted nadir-pointing antenna array. A key feature of GRASP is that it can be simultaneously used by multiple users, each targeting unique frequencies of interest. The GRASP facility on the ISS will increase access to and use of terrestrial RF signal data, which is currently constricted due to limited access to and high cost associated with recovering terrestrial RF signals using satellites.