Argos is the main satellite telemetry system used by the wildlife research community for animal tracking and scientific data collection all around the world, to analyze and understand animal migrations and behavior and then propose conservation measures.
The Argos constellation with 6 satellites in orbit in 2017 is being extended in the following years with Argos-3 payload on METOP-C (launch in October 2018), and the new Argos 4 payloads on OceanSat-3 (launch in 2019), CDARS in December 2021, METOP-SG-B1 in December 2022, and METOP-SG-B2 in 2029.
Argos-4 will allow more frequency bands, new modulation dedicated to animal tracking allowing very low transmission power transmitters (50 to 100mW), with very low data rates (124 bps), enhancement of high data rates (1200-4800 bps), and downlink performance, at the whole contribution to enhance the system capacity (50,000 active beacons per month instead of 20,000 today).
French Space Agency CNES, which designs Argos payloads, is innovating and launching the Argos ANGELS project (Argos NEO Generic Economic Light Satellites). ANGELS will lead to a nanosatellite prototype with an Argos NEO instrument (30 cm x 30 cm x 20cm) that will be launched in 2019.
The design of the renewal of the Argos constellation, called Argos For Next Generations (Argos4NG), is on track and will be operational in 2022. This constellation will allow revisit time of less than 20 minutes in average between two satellite passes.
The presentation will then be an overview of the Argos system, present and future and new capacities coming with it.
