British Association of Remote Sensing Companies

European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani today announced in London that the consortium led by OHB System AG and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) will build a further eight satellites for the European Union’s Galileo satellite navigation programme under the supervision of the European Space Agency.

The new contract will see SSTL continuing its role as payload prime, assembling, integrating and testing the navigation payloads in the UK, whilst OHB System, as the prime contractor, builds the eight satellite platforms and executes the final integration of all the satellites in Germany. The SSTL-OHB partnership is already building fourteen satellites for the Galileo programme and will draw on its heritage and experience to produce the additional satellites to demanding schedules.

Matt Perkins, SSTL Group CEO commented “SSTL has played a key role in the development of the Galileo programme for nine years and we have the commitment, experience and track record to deliver this substantial contract. We are delighted to have been selected with our partner, OHB, to continue to play our part in building Europe’s operational navigation system.”

SSTL is assembling the Galileo programme payloads at its recently opened purpose-built Kepler technical facility in Guildford, UK. Under the contract, SSTL is fully responsible for the construction and test of the navigation payloads. SSTL will manufacture the electrical harnesses and the electronics to interface the navigation payload with the satellite platform. The remaining payload equipment will be externally procured by SSTL from European and other suppliers. SSTL’s payload solution is based on European-sourced atomic clocks, navigation signal generators, high power travelling wave tube amplifiers and antennas and will provide all of Galileo’s services.

Galileo is Europe’s own Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), providing real-time positioning, navigation and timing services with unrivalled accuracy and integrity. It will be interoperable with the American GPS system and Russia’s GLONASS system.

The Full Operational Capability phase of the Galileo programme is managed and fully funded by the European Union. The Commission and ESA have signed a delegation agreement by which ESA acts as design and procurement agent on behalf of the Commission. The views expressed in this Press Release can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union and/or ESA. “Galileo” is a trademark subject to OHIM application number 002742237 by EU and ESA.

Small satellite manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) has today announced completion of the development phase of its new low-cost Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite system. Called NovaSAR-S, the system offers customers coverage of any spot on Earth in all conditions – seeing through cloud cover across both day and night.

The 400-kg NovaSAR-S design combines SSTL’s flight-proven SSTL-300 platform with an innovative S-band SAR payload, developed in collaboration with Astrium Ltd, who will be responsible for supplying the payloads. The challenge has been accommodating the power and processing requirements within a small, low-cost satellite platform. NovaSAR-S’s 3m x 1m phased array antenna was developed by space-borne SAR specialists at Astrium Ltd, and has now been successfully trialled using an airborne demonstrator. The SSTL-300 platform hosting the payload is an adaption of SSTL’s very-high-resolution imaging NigeriaSat-2 mission, which was launched in August.

“Based on highly efficient S-band solid state amplifier technology, NovaSAR-S has been designed to provide detailed imaging performance for a variety of orbits,” said Luis Gomes of SSTL. “It offers space-based radar capability to customers who might not have considered it possible – all for the equivalent cost of a traditional low cost optical Earth observation mission.”

NovaSAR-S acquires medium resolution radar imagery of 6-30 m ground sample distance, depending on the viewing mode being employed. Its four viewing modes are optimised for a wide range of applications, including flood monitoring, agricultural crop assessment, forest monitoring, land cover classification, disaster management and maritime applications – notably ship tracking and oil spill detection.

Radar images reveal surface textures instead of reflected light. A radar satellite illuminates its target with a microwave beam then records the signal bouncing back. In addition, the satellite takes advantage of its rapid motion relative to Earth’s surface to build up an image with sharpened resolution equivalent to that of a much larger ‘synthetic aperture’ antenna.

Intended for equatorial or polar low-Earth orbits, NovaSAR-S offers high data throughput of at least one million square km per day, observing in a variety of polarisation combinations to add ‘colour’ and detail to acquisitions.

The system is designed to function either independently, or as part of a constellation. A trio of NovaSAR-S satellites could image any point on the globe every day, regardless of local weather or time of day.

SSTL’s unique approach to engineering and project management means it can deliver a complete NovaSAR-S mission into orbit within 24 months. The platform has been specifically sized to facilitate low-cost launch opportunities. SSTL can also offer support on ground segment architecture, data processing and archiving and knowledge transfer, based on customer needs.

SSTL has today announced that it will launch the NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X satellites on behalf of the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) by a Dnepr launch vehicle from Yasny, Russia 17th August 2011.

Both NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X will be launched into the Disaster Monitoring Constellation, where they will assist with disaster relief and global environmental monitoring campaigns alongside satellites from other consortium members ASAL (Algeria), BLMIT (China), Deimos Space (Spain) and SSTL (UK).

A joint SSTL and NASRDA team performed the launch campaign tasks in Yasny, ensuring that both satellites are healthy and ready to launch.

SSTL Executive Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting, will accompany a delegation of 12 Nigerian ministers and NASRDA head, Dr S.O Mohammed, for the historic launch. Both satellites will significantly boost African capabilities for natural resource management.

Find out more about the NigeriaSat-2 / NigeriaSat-X launch as it happens at: http://www.sstl.co.uk/launches/nigeriasat-2—nigeriasat-x

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has moved its technical operations into The Kepler Building, a new £10 million state-of-the-art technical facility, providing assembly, testing and integration of satellites platforms and payloads for SSTL’s global customers in a single location.

Co-located with SSTL’s headquarters in Guildford, the new facility provides significant new capacity that will increase throughput for multi-satellite contracts.

SSTL CEO Dr. Matt Perkins commented: “SSTL has delivered growth during the recession, contributing to the UK space industry’s export success through continued technological innovation. We are actively recruiting with more than twenty current vacancies and The Kepler Building will provide our engineers with the facilities they need to build more satellites and achieve our growth plans for the next 20 years.”

The 3,700sqm (40,000 sqft) facility’s cleanrooms, laboratories and testing facilities will be utilised from this week replacing existing facilities on the University of Surrey campus. Satellites currently being assembled and tested in the new world-class test halls include TechDemoSat-1 and the Kazakhstan medium resolution satellite for Astrium. Six SSTL satellite missions are scheduled for launch this year: NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X for NASRDA, KANOPUS 1 and 2 spacecraft for VNIIEM, ADS-1B for COM DEV, and SAPPHIRE for MacDonald Dettwiler Associates. The new capacity also plays an important role in SSTL’s contract to supply the first 14 Galileo Full Operational Constellation payloads in partnership with OHB Technology, which will be assembled in the secure facility.

The Kepler Building will house approximately 40 permanent staff and anything up to 100 further project specific staff from across the company at peak test and integration periods. An integral part of the new facility are the world-class test halls that provide two 125 cubic metre walk-in thermal chambers, a seismic test platform, 15,000kg & 3,200kg monorail cranes, 10,000kg & 8,000kg gantry cranes, and reinforced floors, providing the greatest possible flexibility for integration and testing of both small and larger spacecraft.