Earlier this week, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao witnessed the signing of a £110m satellite imaging deal between SSTL subsidiary DMCii and Beijing-based company 21AT during the UK-China trade summit at 10 Downing Street.

China’s rapid growth has prompted unparalleled demand for satellite imagery, which can be used for urban planning, change detection and disaster monitoring.

In a new way of requiring satellite imagery, 21AT will be leasing 100% of the DMC3 constellation’s capacity from DMCii, giving them the flexibility to quickly receive the images they need, but without the complexity associated with operating three satellites.

DMC3 will be powered by three SSTL-300S1 satellites, SSTL’s new smallsat design which provides unparalleled 1 metre high resolution imagery with high speed downlink and 45 degrees off-pointing.

Yesterday was a busy day at SSTL's HQ in Guildford. As the £110m DMC3 satellite constellation contract was being agreed with Chinese company 21AT, SSTL was also delighted to host a visit by three Members of Parliament with strong interests in space and what space applications can do for the "man on the street".

Simon Wright, MP for Norwich South, is vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Space Committee with a particular interest in Earth Observation and Climate Change. David Morris, MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale in Lancashire, is also a vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Space Committee with a particular interest in Space Science and Satellite Broadband access.

It’s genuinely exciting to see the high tech space industry working and growing here in Surrey. A facility like SSTL deserves a high level of Government support.

commented Jonathan Lord MP, who was interested in visiting SSTL given the proximity of the company's Guildford Headquarters to his Woking constituency.


During the visit the MPs met SSTL's founder and board chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting. Sir Martin commented:

SSTL is primarily an exporting company and needs to work closely with the government in many of our export activities. In addition to working closely with the newly formed UK Space Agency, the Parliamentary Space Committee provides an excellent forum for space companies like SSTL to discuss, with members of Parliament, the means by which the government can support our export activities.

Continue reading "Space-savvy MPs visit Kepler technical facility"

SSTL’s very own Mission and Systems Team Leader Kathryn Graham not only inspires Space Blog readers, but also motivates young people of all ages to become interested in careers within science and engineering as a STEM ambassador. Kathryn reaches out to young people by, for example, visiting schools, where she shares her real-life experience of how exciting a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) can be. Not all of us can say that we are employed to come up with new ideas for technologies to be put up in space!

Recently Kathryn engaged with 75 female students age 12-13 at the Warwick School in Redhill, a specialist technology college. Students from five schools in Surrey took part in the event, which was all about ‘Women into Science and Engineering’ (WISE). The day started off with a careers ‘speed dating’, where Kathryn met up with the students one-on-one to answer questions about her job and other STEM careers, such as: What does your job involve? Why did you choose your career? How important are STEM subjects in your job? What qualifications do you have?

The students were set an engineering task in the afternoon to create a self-propelled vehicle containing an egg - which proved to be more difficult than expected to avoid the much-feared ”scrambling effect”!

Continue reading "Reaching out to future space cadets"

For some years now, SSTL has been using its Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellites to assist people around the globe who have become victims of natural disasters. On behalf of the International Charter, imagery has been rapidly collected, analysed, and then delivered to relief organisations which use the data in the immediate aftermath of natural catastrophes such as tsunamis, forest fires, floods, and earthquakes.

It has long been an ambition to move beyond “Disaster Monitoring” into the realm of “Disaster Mitigation”: providing assistance not only after the event has happened, but reducing the impact of the event by providing warning in advance of an impending disaster.

In some cases, of course, this is already possible. Hurricanes and cyclones can be tracked across the oceans for several days in advance of their landfall, giving residents in their path time to prepare. And indeed, this warning period also provides relief organisations with the opportunity to schedule imagery collection opportunities in anticipation of the expected destruction.

But other catastrophes are much harder to forecast, and perhaps the most intractable are earthquakes. Infrequently, major earthquakes, (so-called intra-plate earthquakes), occur unexpectedly, well away from known fault lines: an example being the magnitude 8 New Madrid earthquake of 1812, which was powerful enough to change the course of the Mississippi river in the USA.

Most of the time, however, earthquakes occur in relatively predictable locations on known fault lines – the San Andreas fault in California being probably the best known crack in the Earth’s crust.

So the problem is not so much to determine where an earthquake is likely to occur, but rather trying to figure out when it will happen. Consequently, scientists have spent years looking for precursor signals that they can measure in advance of an earthquake to provide people with an adequate warning.

Continue reading "Earthquake Prediction From Space "