Radio Groundstations

Overview

(From Wikipedia)

A ground station, earth station, or earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves from astronomical radio sources. Ground stations may be located either on the surface of the Earth, or in its atmosphere.

The Stanford Dish

Background

The Stanford Dish is a 150 ft diameter radio telescope built in 1961 at Stanford University. First used to study the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the station is now used to communicate with satellites and spacecraft using its unique bistatic range radio communicators, where the transmitter and receiver are in separate units. Beside the dish stands a 20-25 megacycle transmitter - the million watt input gives the dish a 300-400 KW radar probe.

Stanford Daily Unveiling Article

The dish is currently owned by SRI International

Bands of Operation

150 MHz to 1.5 GHz as described by this site