Antennas ship for COMDEV maritime mission
SSTL has delivered eight S-Band patch antennas to COM DEV this month that will play a small part in the Canadian space company’s exciting M3MSat (Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Micro-satellite) mission.
The M3MSat (Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Micro-satellite) is a technology demonstration mission jointly funded and managed by Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The microsatellite is being designed, built and launched by COMDEV for the Government of Canada to support Canadian sovereignty, security, safety and communications needs within the territorial and maritime regions of Canada and beyond.
M3MSat is designed to demonstrate the full capability of advanced space-based AIS (Automatic Identification System) technology developed by COM DEV. AIS signals are broadcast from the world’s major marine vessels for navigation and identification purposes, but they are currently only collected by other ships and land-based receivers within a severely limited 50 nautical mile range. COMDEV's unique AIS technology exceeds the performance of any other known system and the collection of these signals from space would enable an unprecedented global view of the world's shipping traffic – rather like air traffic control but for ships.
The new S-band antennas will allow M3MSat to communicate with groundstations, and the four GPS patch antennas will allow the satellite to receive GPS signals to determine their position in space. This latest delivery supplements two GPS patch antennas that SSTL shipped to COMDEV last year.
SSTL’s patch antennas are particularly cost effective, an attribute further strengthened by their low mass design. The patch antennas belong to a complete S-band communications suite for telecommand, telemetry, and payload downlink that also includes Isoflux quadrifilar helix antennas for different coverage requirements.
A secondary communications payload will be operated on M3MSat to demonstrate a range of low data rate applications that can support Canadian civil needs as well as commercial requirements. The micro-satellite is expected to be launched in 2010.
