In the first quarter of the New Year, a SSTL satellite will be launched. This time around it carries more than just a payload, it will contribute to charity.

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited showed that their satellite technology is not only beneficial for longer-term natural disaster monitoring; it also benefits the local community. When the new Surrey built UKDMC-2 satellite joins a group of six SSTL satellites in March in order to monitor and record natural disasters such as tsunamis, earth quakes, volcanic activity and flooding, it will also be carrying a message of benevolence.

Whilst building the spacecraft that is worth more than £5million, Dr Matt Perkins, Chief Executive of SSTL, came up with the idea of running a competition which would benefit a local charity. The winner of the competition would have the once in a lifetime opportunity to have their name or company logo printed alongside the satellite.

Galaxy Cars, a mini-cab company from Woking, won the competition by donating £8000 to Phyllis Tuckwell, a dedicated Hospice in Farnham that provides care to more than 100 people every day. Phyllis Tuckwell will also have their name printed on the space capsule.

Dr Perkins explained that he wanted to help the local community as SSTL’s work has a certain reach, which could be capitalised to promote charitable projects:

I was touched by what I heard about Phyllis Tuckwell and so we took the opportunity to raise funds for them and put their name into space

Sarah Brocklebank, Chief Executive of Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice, said:

I was delighted with the contribution and the opportunity of having the charity name floating in orbit.

Mohammad Zubair, owner of Galaxy Cars, stated:

We think this is a great opportunity to put something back into the community.

The new satellite is the latest edition to SSTL’s space portfolio and will join a team of six devices that are already in orbit, one of which has been going more than five years (Alsat-1).

Alsat-1, the first SSTL satellite of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) and the catalyst of Algeria’s fledgling space programme, remains healthy and fully operational after its sixth year in orbit.

Now, having exceeded its original 5 year schedule, Alsat-1 is more than 12 months into extended mission. The satellite engineers say that this remarkable extension was mainly accomplished through careful battery management.

Alsat-1 was not only the first DMC satellite, but also the first spacecraft to carry a Line Scan Imager. As such, SSTL is particularly delighted about this recent achievement. Its tasks have included responding to forest fires in Algeria and contributing to worldwide disaster response under the International Charter: Space and Major Disasters.

The Earth-Observation (EO) satellite is still providing imagery to the Algerian CNTS team (Centre National des Techniques Spatiales of Algeria) on a regular basis, although at a reduced capacity in order to further extend the battery life.

Alsat-1 carries an optical imaging payload developed by SSTL to provide 32m ground resolution with an exceptionally wide swath width of over 640 km allowing it to image an unparalleled area in each pass. CNTS is distributing the data to other Algerian institutions, which are using it for pollution monitoring, cartography and petrology applications.

All five RapidEye satellites were successfully launched this morning by Dnepr from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Following this morning’s launch, the spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle in slightly different orbits to allow constellation phasing and will eventually be positioned equally spaced within the same orbit about 19 minutes apart. SSTL will control the constellation throughout the two week Launch and Early Operation Phase (LEOP) in a coordinated effort between their mission control facilities in the UK and the ground station supplied to RapidEye in Brandenburg, Germany. A team of three SSTL operators and three support staff will work with the MDA and RapidEye teams in Brandenburg, with the UK team analysing data as it is received and on standby to react to any technical challenges.

Project manager Ben Stocker commented: “The simultaneous launch of five satellites is not without its challenges. Commissioning will be performed from both the RapidEye ground station in Brandenburg and the SSTL mission control centre in Guildford. The five satellites will gradually disperse from each other following separation from the launch vehicle, allowing three satellites to be tracked and operated from Brandenburg with the remainder under the control of the Guildford operators. This method of operation offers the most efficient route to achieving the maximum amount of contact time per satellite during the early days of commissioning following launch. As the satellites are gradually manoeuvred into position around the orbit during the commissioning phase, the Brandenburg ground station will assume full control over the constellation.”

Following separation from the launch vehicle, the spacecraft activate three GaAs solar panels, generating up to 105W in sunlight. The power system will then assume active control of the battery charge management system, enabling operators to initiate communication with the five RapidEye satellites via the S-band system. Within hours the team plan to upload programs to the on-board computers that will enable early operations and checkout to commence.

The attitude control system on each spacecraft will use magnetometers, magnetorquers, sun sensors and reaction wheels to achieve 3-axis stabilization, whilst using high accuracy attitude information from a star camera to finalise accurate nadir (towards Earth) pointing before proceeding with more advanced roll manoeuvres.

Following LEOP, the full functionality of the satellites, including the imaging payloads built by German company Jena-Optronik GmbH, will be tested by collecting imagery over a 10-week period. During this time MDA will demonstrate the performance of the constellation before RapidEye AG takes delivery of the system and commences commercial imaging operations.

RapidEye plans to operate the mission to deliver agricultural land information products and services such as crop monitoring and mapping, yield prediction and natural disaster assessment.

SSTL’s Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting, commented: “SSTL long ago established the benefits of small satellite constellations and launched the Disaster Monitoring Constellation in 2002, paving the way for a new paradigm in remote sensing. The launch of RapidEye will fully realise the business potential of constellations.

The simultaneous build of five satellites is the largest mission so far in terms of maximising and managing production at SSTL’s Guildford facilities. Expert in-house engineering and project management teams worked closely with MDA, streamlining the design, build and test of all five satellite platforms.”