Earth station

An earth station, ground station, or earth terminal is a terrestrial terminal station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft and/or or reception of radio waves from an astronomical radio source. Earth stations are located either on the surface of the Earth, or within Earth's atmosphere. Earth stations communicate with spacecraft by transmitting and receiving radio waves in the super high frequency or extremely high frequency bands (e.g., microwaves). When an earth station successfully transmits radio waves to a spacecraft (or vice versa) it establishes a telecommunications link.