This month, SSTL CEO Sir Martin Sweeting received the Royal Institute of Navigation's Harold Spencer Jones Award for "an outstanding contribution to navigation". The award was presented by the institute's patron, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh (photo).

The award recognises SSTL's achievement in the construction and successful launch of the first Galileo validation satellite, GIOVE-A.

Sir Martin was invited for the President's Address to speak on "Small Satellites - Changing the Economics of Space". The talk discussed how affordable small satellites such as GIOVE-A enable low cost constellations to be built providing highly capable distributed systems.

Earlier in the day Elizabeth Rooney and Andrew Bradford from SSTL collected certificates of achievement on behalf of their colleagues at SSTL for the work carried out on GIOVE-A.

SSTL were host to ex-ESA astronaut Pedro Duque this month. Pedro worked at ESA (European Space Agency) for 20 years, the last 14 of which were spent as an Astronaut Pedro has visited space twice - on the US shuttle in 1998 and on a Soyuz launched mission to the International Space Station in 2003 as part of the ESA?s Cervantes Mission.

Now, Pedro is the CEO of the new company "Deimos Imaging SL", a subsidiary of Deimos Space SL. Pedro was visiting SSTL so that his company could finalise a contract for an Earth imaging satellite named DEIMOS.

Click the thumbnail to enlarge - (from left to right) James Penson, Adrian Black, Alfonso Barreiro - Deimos Imaging, Petro Duque - Deimos Imaging, Miguel Bello Mora - Deimos Space, Abel Calle Montes - Univerisdad de Vallavolid, Paul Stephens (DMCii), Jenny Lorenzi.

This satellite will be built by SSTL to be ready for launch early in 2008 and will form part of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC). The satellite will provide imagery for commercial applications, for government use and for rapid-response following disasters.

This contract with SSTL will provide Deimos with an enhanced version of the DMC wide area imaging system. The new system will image 600km wide swaths of the Earth in three spectral bands at a ground resolution of 22 metres, rather than using the standard 32m DMC imager. The contract also covers the provision of the ground system to allow operation of the satellite from Valladolid, Spain and it establishes SSTL as the launch agent for procurement of launch services.

This contract is Deimos' first step into satellite ownership. Since it was formed in 2001, Deimos has grown rapidly to become one of Europe's leading Space consultancies with over 200 staff. Mr Durque commented, "we went to Surrey because they could offer us excellent value with a proven product."

Mr Duque also acknowledged the unique operation of the DMC, "by procuring one satellite, we could benefit from being a part of a larger constellation which is already operational. This means that we can receive data from space before our satellite is launched and, once launched, obtain imagery of Spain far faster than we could with a single satellite. Our business case relies on this."

SSTL's RapidEye team has recently completed the testing of all 5 RapidEye platforms (aka busses) for preliminary delivery to MDA, and is now preparing for the electronic integration of the 6.5m Jena Optronik imager payload.

The stage testing comprised ambient and thermal tests of the modules, followed by vibration testing of the complete platform - an important test for a satellite launched by rocket! A review of the project was then undertaken with MDA signing off the milestone as a success, allowing the project to proceed. The issues to be addressed had been successfully pre-worked in close co-operation with MDA prior to the review, ensuring a smooth ride with no surprises on the day!

This was followed immediately with another crucial milestone being met; the completion of the Spacecraft Control Centre Factory Acceptance Test (SCC FAT). This important step ensured that the ground station was fully compatible with the platform used in each satellite, and was ready for installation in Germany.

The groundstation's 7m receiving antenna is already in place - the photo above shows the parabolic reflector as it was being raised into place on the roof of RapidEye's Brandenberg HQ.

RapidEye Project Manager Ben Stocker is looking forward to a very busy 12 months of SCC commissioning, payload integration, spacecraft EVT (Environmental Verification and Test), training, launch and in-orbit commissioning!

The RapidEye EO (earth observation) constellation will be used to provide data services for monitoring natural resources such as crops and for other EO applications. RapidEye is a landmark undertaking, the world's first commercial EO constellation, made possible by the MDA and SSTL teaming. SSTL is building the 5 satellites under contract from MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates (MDA) of Canada.

Recent talk of slinging satellites into space has captured the imagination of the scientific press following the release of United States Air Force (USAF) research findings. New Scientist explained that the idea explored uses a hoop of superconducting magnets several kilometres wide, similar in appearance to a particle accelerator, to hurl satellites into space.

As far fetched as it may sound, the technology has its fans - but why? The answer: because once the initial capital has been invested, the launch of satellites into space could be significantly cheaper.

Accelerator concepts have been proposed several times before – but were previously regarded as non-viable because the payloads that could be launched would be too small to offer significant capability.

However, the success of missions such as SSTL's 6.5. kg SNAP-1 nanosatellite (pictured left), shows that useful missions can be performed using very small satellites.

Not resting on their laurels, SSTL is now developing PALMSAT with Surrey Space Centre (SSC) academics, which weighs just 1 kg, but incorporates all the capabilities of SNAP-1. As the name suggests, PALMSAT (bottom left) fits in the palm of your hand.

Clearly, providing they are adequately protected from damage, 1 kg satellites like PALMSAT could be launched into closely-spaced clusters, or more widely spaced constellations, by an accelerator of the sort that has been proposed by the USAF.



"This accelerator proposal is clearly interesting, and ties in well with SSTL's focus on reducing the costs of access to space. One of the challenges for our satellite engineers at SSTL would be to design an on-board propulsion system which would survive the enormous launch loads [g forces] from the accelerator and yet still be able to provide enough thrust to insert the satellites into orbit at the top of their initial launch trajectory. Without such a manoeuvre, the satellite payloads would simply re-enter the Earth's atmosphere." Commented Stuart Eves, SSTL.

Clusters and constellations offer particular advantages in terms of effective aperture and revisit times which are simply too expensive to achieve with large satellites.

The USAF interest in improved revisit times and rapid access to orbit stems from their "Responsive space" initiative, which reflects the fact that space is no longer just a strategic capability, but is increasingly being used to support military operations in theatre, where the response times clearly have to be much shorter.

Opinions in the blogosphere vary from Slashdot discussions about radial loading, meanwhile The Astronomy Blog have a great photo of the ring. Astronomy (blog)compares the new research to previous straight track proposals, while Redwolf are wondering what kind of satellites would be launched with the new launch technology.