The QCI-CAT consortium made a trip to the optical ground station (OGS) near Innsbruck during its general assembly meeting. Participants from AIT, SBA, Graz University of Technology and Med Uni Graz took the cable car from Innsbruck to the mount top. At the Hafelekar, located at 2265 m, stands the brand-new OGS of the University of Innsbruck featuring a 1-meter diameter primary mirror.
The ground station is named after Marietta Blau, an Austrian physicist who made groundbreaking discoveries on cosmic rays in the 1930s. The data for her research was actually taken in the very same spot, in the hut just next to the OGS. Today, it is recognized as a “Historic Site” by the European Physical Society.
The station is planned for research activities focusing on quantum communication with and via quantum satellites, quantum sensing in the fields of atmospheric science and astrophysics, and the entanglement of remote quantum memories and quantum processors as a step towards a global quantum internet.
In the EuroQCI context, the Marietta Blau OGS will be one of Austria’s space connections to the Eagle-1 satellite.
More information about the OGS can be found here: https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/groundstation-marietta-blau
