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Full Stack / BackendOngoing

FrontierSat Ground Station Data System

Backend and data infrastructure around CalgaryToSpace’s ground-station software

Backend and database work for CalgaryToSpace’s ground-station software, helping organise telemetry and other data coming through the FrontierSat communications stack.

My role
Software / RF Communications Contributor
When
2026–Present
Context
CalgaryToSpace · FrontierSat
01 / THE OVERVIEW

What I set out to build

A ground station does more than receive bytes from a radio. Telemetry, commands, mission context, and other data need to be stored in a way that the rest of the team can query and build on. The challenge was designing software around a physical communications system rather than a normal web product.

My contribution

  • Worked on ground-station database architecture.
  • Helped structure telemetry, command, and mission-related data.
  • Worked on backend/API integration.
  • Contributed to software connecting RF workflows to persistent data storage.

Problem & approach

I joined through the RF communications software team and focused mainly on the data side of the ground station. I worked on how information from the transceiver should be represented, stored, and exposed to downstream software, while learning how that fits around the broader SatNOGS and ground-station stack.

How it works

  1. 01

    Ingest

    Receive or ingest data from the ground-station communications stack.

  2. 02

    Organise

    Parse and organise the data into useful domain objects.

  3. 03

    Store

    Persist telemetry and related records in PostgreSQL.

  4. 04

    Expose

    Expose stored information to downstream software through backend interfaces/APIs.

Data & evaluation

Data & inputs

Ground-station telemetry frames and API responses. Networking experiments in the mission-operations code include TCP/UDP routing.

Progress so far

Ground station
System scope
Team contribution
Engineering context
  • Ongoing team engineering work; this project is better represented by architecture and implemented components than by a single performance metric.

Screenshots

FIG. 01Ground Station Design

Limits & lessons

Limitations

  • My contribution covers ground-station data and backend integration within the RF communications software team. It does not cover the satellite or RF hardware as a whole.

What I learned

  • This has been useful because the software is attached to a real communications system. Interfaces and data models have to make sense to other software and other people, not just to the person who wrote them.

Next steps

  • Keep improving the data model as telemetry requirements become clearer.
  • Strengthen integration with the rest of the ground-station stack.
  • Add better validation, observability, and developer tooling around incoming data.
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