Second generation disaster-monitoring microsatellite platform

Abstract

Earth Observation satellites have traditionally been expensive to develop and launch and, as a consequence, have been targeted to cover the diverse needs of a large user community. Many niche applications in remote sensing are not exploited to their full potential or operating on a profitable basis and, as a result, space-based Earth Observation has not yet made a similar impact into our everyday lives when compared with satellite communications. Small satellite technology however has come of age and Earth observation instrument technology has advanced to levels permitting high quality sensors to be flown on small inexpensive satellite platforms. Many examples of such missions have returned increasingly sophisticated imagery and have been well documented. As well as offering in-orbit ‘shutter control’ to small groups and specialist organisations, these satellites can be individually tailored to specific applications with custom sensors, filters, swath width, and Ground Sampling Distance. Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) has been at the forefront of developing innovative Earth Observation missions for the past decade, using small satellites covering a mass range of 5kg to 300kg. Recent missions have demonstrated remote inspection, high quality multispectral imaging at Ground Sampling Distances (GSD) of 30m and panchromatic imaging at a GSD of 10m. Currently a disaster-monitoring network of five microsatellites is under construction by SSTL within an international partnership to capitalise on these small satellite capabilities. It will offer a system with a temporal resolution of daily global coverage providing rapid multi-spectral imagery of wide-swath 30m GSD to the disaster relief community. In order to expand the capabilities of such a network, Surrey is now developing a follow-on network based on a second-generation spacecraft platform, and a small satellite platform has been developed specifically to meet generic small satellite Earth Observation applications as part of a constellation. It allows the visible-band imaging network under development to be expanded to serve more advanced applications within disaster monitoring with sensors such as IR, ocean colour, hyperspectral, high resolution imagery, and even Synthetic Aperture Radar.