DoT-1 is a technology demonstration small satellite mission trialling new generation avionics for SSTL.
DoT-1 flies a commercial off the shelf Raspberry Pi camera which captured an image of the Mediterranean and a video of Europe
We supplied 6 spacecraft platforms for the FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 Program, a joint meteorological satellite constellation between Taiwan and the United States for observing and monitoring the global meteorology, climate, and ionosphere. The goal of the joint program is to establish an operational constellation to replace the current FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC mission.
The ESPA class platorm for the Orbital Test Bed (OTB) satellite was designed and manufactured by SSTL before being shipped to the US for testing and payload integration at SSTL's US office in Denver, Colarado which was acquired by General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems Group in 2017. OTB carries five demonstration payloads including NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock, for a variety of commercial, US government, and academic organisations.
SSTL has supplied suites of satellite avionics and software plus system design support, power management and batteries, on board computers and data handling capabilities for satellite subsystems and satellite operations to NPP VNIIEM for their KANOPUS-V satellite programmes.
SSTL has also supported spacecraft assembly, integration and in orbit commissioning activities for these satellites in Russia.
VESTA is a 3U nanosatellite technology demonstration mission testing a new two-way VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) payload developed by Honeywell for the exactEarth advanced maritime satellite constellation. The 4kg satellite has 3-axis pointing capability, an SEU tolerant on-board computer, VxWorks operating system and also flies a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) VHF deployable antenna system developed by Innovative Solutions in Space for the VDES transceiver.
KazSTSAT is a small Earth observation satellite jointly developed by SSTL and JV Ghalam LLP. The satellite has a mass of 105kg and acquires image data at 18.7 m GSD with a swath width of 275 km. The spacecraft carries several experimental and demonstration units, including a beyond diffraction limit imager, a sun sensor, and a novel OBCARM. KazSTSAT is operated by Ghalam, using a fully virtualized ground segment with S/X-band software defined back-ends deployed at KSAT ground stations in Svalbard and a technology demonstration ground station in Astana.
NovaSAR-1 is a small Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mission designed for low-cost programmes and optimised for shared launch opportunities. The system baselines heritage avionics with an imaging payload developed by the space borne SAR team at Airbus in Portsmouth, UK, and S-band solid state power amplifier technology.
NovaSAR-1 has been part-funded by the UK Government. Mission partners signed up for capacity from NovaSAR-1 include the UK Space Agency, Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the Republic of the Philippines Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) and Space-Eyes.LLC.
The SSTL S1-4 satellite has a mass of 440kg and is capable of acquiring multiple targets in one pass, utilising spot, strip and mosaic imaging modes and 45 degree off-pointing agility for a range of applications including urban planning, agricultural monitoring, land classification, natural resource management and disaster monitoring. The very high resolution imager on board the spacecraft was designed and manufactured by SSTL and acquires sub 1 metre resolution images in panchromatic mode and sub 4 metre resolution images in multispectral mode, with a swath width of about 20.8km.
Data capacity from the satellite is leased to Airbus, Twenty First Century Aerospace Technology Co Ltd (21AT) and LatConnect60.
SSTL has supplied suites of satellite avionics and software plus system design support, power management and batteries, on board computers and data handling capabilities for satellite subsystems and satellite operations to NPP VNIIEM for their KANOPUS-V satellite programmes.
SSTL has also supported spacecraft assembly, integration and in orbit commissioning activities in Russia.
Remove Debris was deployed from the International Space Station on 20th June 2018, with launch service interface and launch provision by NanoRacks and NASA respectively.
The RemoveDEBRIS mission achieved the first ever in-orbit demonstration of space debris capture and performed four active space debris removal technology demonstrations, testing novel technologies, representative of an operational scenario during a low-cost mission.
SSTL designed and manufactured the Remove Debris satellite platform, which hosted the payloads for use in the debris removal demonstrations. These payloads, or technical content within them, were produced by mission partners Airbus, ArianeGroup, CSEM, Inria, ISIS, SSC, and Stellenbosch University.
After a successful mission RemoveDEBRIS burned up in Earth's atmosphere on 4th December 2021.
The Remove Debris mission received funding from the European Commission. Specifically, the research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement #607099.
CARBONITE-2 is a 100kg earth observation technology demonstration mission owned and operated by SSTL. It demonstrates a low cost video-from-orbit solution designed to deliver 1m resolution images and colour HD video clips with a swath width of 5km.
View videos acquired by the satellite in orbit.
SSTL supplied a small low earth orbit (LEO) satellite to Telesat, a leading global satellite operator, as part of a test and validation phase for an advanced, global LEO satellite constellation.
The satellite flies an SSTL-built Ka payload and utilises hydrazine propulsion systems for in-orbit raising and de-orbiting. It is operated by Telesat in low earth orbit at ~1000km
In 2019 Telesat LEO Phase 1 satellite demonstrated the first ever 5G connectivity on a LEO spacecraft.
Kanopus V IR is an Earth Observation satellite manufactured by Russia’s NPP VNIIEM with spacecraft avionics, computers and power distribution from SSTL.
Kanopus-V IR is fitted with an additional infrared imaging payload and a Panchromatic Imaging System (PSS), a Multispectral Imaging System (MSS) and a prototype Multispectral Scanner Unit (MSU-200). The panchromatic imager, has a resolution of 2.5 metres.
Lomonosov is a mission for Russia to study transient phenomena in the Earth's upper atmosphere, cosmic rays and gamma ray bursts.
SSTL supplied satellite avionics and software plus system design support, power management and batteries, on board computers and data handling capabilities for satellite subsystems and satellite operations to NPP VNIIEM for this satellite programme.
Lomonosov is a mission for Russia to study transient phenomena in the Earth's upper atmosphere, cosmic rays and gamma ray bursts.
AlSat-1B is based on the SSTL-100 platform, hosting a 24m multispectral imager and a 12m panchromatic imager. Eighteen ASAL engineers undertook the Assembly, Integration and Test phase of the satellite in Algeria, offering further opportunities for the transfer of skills and the development of local capabilities.
The satellite is used for agricultural and disaster monitoring.
Under a £110m contract SSTL designed and manufactured three SSTL-300S1 satellite platforms, a new smallsat design which provides unparalleled 1 metre high resolution imagery with high speed downlink and 45 degree off-pointing.
The three satellites formed a new constellation, TripleSat, with daily revisit times which is crucial for change detection, disaster monitoring and response planning, and essential for acquiring cloud-free imagery. Beijing-based commercial imaging company, 21AT, has leased 100% of the imaging capacity of the three satellites.
CARBONITE-1 is a technology demonstration mission for SSTL, designed to demonstrate video-from-orbit capability using rapid-build techniques and to test COTS components and new avionics in orbit.
The satellite was designed, built and tested in 6 months and 12 days. In an orbit of 500km the imager is designed to provide 1m GSD with a swath width of 5km. The Commercial-off-the-Shelf industrial video camera, adapted by SSTL for space provides 15 second HD video clips at 1m GSD.
UK industry and academia worked together with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) on a new innovative satellite to trial UK space technologies and provide an ‘in-orbit test facility’ for innovative UK payloads and software.
At around one meter cubed (roughly the size of a washing machine) and a surprisingly light mass of around 150kg, TechDemoSat (TDS-1) carried eight payloads plus a mixture of heritage and new product development systems from SSTL.
In May 2019, TechDemoSat-1 reached the end of its mission life and a drag sail supplied by Cranfield University was deployed to increase the rate of orbital decay.
Kazakhstan's KazEOSat-2 satellite delivers medium resolution images with 6.5m GSD and a 77km swath.
Under the contract SSTL also provided 6 months hands-on training for 19 customer engineers and Managers.
KazEOSAT-2 medium resolution imagery is utlised for mapping, agricultural monitoring and resource management.
Space researchers at the University of Surrey's Surrey Space Centre and SSTL engineers developed STRaND-1, a 3U CubeSat weighing 3.5kg containing a smartphone payload that was launched into orbit in 2013. STRaND-1 was built in engineer's free time using advanced commercial off-the-shelf components.
SSTL supplied the satellite platform to MacDonald Dettwiler Associates for the SAPPHIRE satellite-based Resident Space Object (RSO) observing service that provides accurate tracking data on deep space orbiting objects.
SAPPHIRE is a key element of the Canadian Space Surveillance System, and is a contributing sensor to the US Space Surveillance Network. It is a space-based electro-optical sensor that will provide accurate and timely tracking data to the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) on space objects at orbit altitudes between 6,000km and 40,000km.
MDA is the prime contractor for the SAPPHIRE mission, including launch.
We supplied the platform for exactView-1 which forms part of the ExactEARTH AIS constellation used by ships and traffic to monitor ship movements through busy shipping channels and harbours and to provide information on global shipping movements.
exactView-1 was launched on 22nd July 2012 on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome.
SSTL has supplied suites of satellite avionics and software plus system design support, power management and batteries, on board computers and data handling capabilities for satellite subsystems and satellite operations to NPP VNIIEM for their KANOPUS-V1 satellite programme. SSTL has also supported spacecraft assembly and integration activities in Russia.
KANOPUS-V1 has been developed for Russia and will record abnormal phenomena to study the possibility of earthquake prediction as well as monitoring agriculture, water and coastal resources. The satellites carry a Russian-built 2.1m panchromatic imager plus a 10.5m multispectral imager.
The NigeriaSat-2 Earth observation satellite provides the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) and the Disaster Monitoring Constellation with very high resolution imaging capability. The satellite is based on the SSTL-300 platform, a highly agile design that delivers multiple viewing modes to a maximum of 2.5m panchromatic (black and white) ground sample distance (GSD) and 5m multispectral (colour) GSD across a 20km swath width.
The NigeriaSat-X Earth observation satellite provides the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) and the Disaster Monitoring Constellation with 22m imaging capability. The spacecraft delivers 22m GSD across a 600km swath width.
NigeriaSat-X was used as a Training Model spacecraft for the team of Nigerian engineers who participated in SSTL’s training and development programme. Over a period of 18 months, the Nigerian engineers were based at SSTL in the UK and were involved in the design, manufacture and test phases of the NigeriaSat-X spacecraft in a controlled real project, real engineering environment. After launch, NigeriaSat-X was commissioned in orbit by the Nigerian engineers.
