SSTL and ISC Kosmotras are celebrating 10 years of successful cooperation, since the SSTL minisatellite UoSAT-12 made history as the first successful orbital injection by the Dnepr launch vehicle in April 1999.

Vladamir Andreev, the Director General of ISC Kosmotras explained the importance of the launch to Kosmotras and SSTL

This occasion is a remarkable event in the activity of our two companies. For SSTL, this was an important step in the progress of space technologies, and for ISC Kosmotras the first orbital launch of the Dnepr launch vehicle.

Dnepr is based upon the SS-18 strategic missile, one of the world’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles. Only minor modifications were required to adapt the rocket that was originally built to fire carry nuclear payloads into the highly reliable satellite launch vehicle that it is today.

Sir Martin Sweeting, Executive Chairman of SSTL, added

The introduction of Dnepr as a cost-effective launch solution suited to small satellites was clearly a new and important development and one which has since been proved through a series of successful small satellite launches. As SSTL’s first minisatellite, UoSAT-12 represented a correspondingly important technological development for the Company, paving the way for the GIOVE-A mission seven years later.

UoSAT-12 was a demonstration mission, designed and built in Guildford, UK by SSTL as a £5.5 million research and development project. The 350kg satellite demonstrated advanced high resolution multispectral and panchromatic Earth observation payloads, low Earth orbit microwave digital communications and a number of novel propulsion and attitude control technologies.

For SSTL, UoSAT-12 was the first in a series of successful Dnepr launches, including Malaysia’s first microsatellite, TiungSat, in September 2000. ISC Kosmotras was also selected for the complex launch of the 5-satellite RapidEye constellation in August 2008. During the summer of 2009, Dnepr will also launch two new DMC satellites built by SSTL: UK-DMC2 and Deimos-1.

You can see the Dnepr in action launching the RapidEye constellation that SSTL built for MDA below.



Cooperation with the Russian launch providers is seen by SSTL as a key ingredient in its small satellite programme, which has never failed to satisfy a customer’s launch requirements. By working closely with partners such as Commercial Space Technologies (CST), SSTL’s experienced team has become adept at filtering through the launch markets to find suitable, and sometimes innovative, solutions for the launch of customer satellites.

Through its newly formed subsidiary, Surrey Satellite Services Limited, SSTL has the long term vision of creating a northern latitude launch capability to satisfy the growing demand for the efficient delivery of sun synchronous, polar low Earth orbit and highly inclined satellite systems, as well as responding to the needs of operational responsive space.

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.”

Since our last update How many spacecraft can you fit in a Dnepr? regarding the 5 RapidEye fit-check in Baikonur, an MDA / SSTL launch team set to work in July preparing the small satellite constellation for launch.

All five RapidEye satellites have now been been integrated with the Dnepr launch vehicle at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and are ready for launch at 0715 UTC (0815 BST, 0915 CEST) this Friday (29th August).

SSTL designed, built the spacecraft bus and performed the assembly, integration and test its facilities in Guildford, UK. It also supplied the spacecraft control centre. MDA’s subcontractor Jena-Optronik GmbH of Jena, Germany, designed and built the imaging payloads.

MDA is the prime contractor of the RapidEye mission that is delivered turnkey and in-orbit to RapidEye AG. MDA has direct responsibility for the mission design, the spacecraft design and the ground planning and image processing system. The Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Government of Canada Crown corporation, is acting as the contracting agency between MDA and RapidEye AG.

RapidEye is a commercial small satellite mission that will enable global monitoring of the Earth’s surface. The constellation is designed to provide insurance and food companies, farmers, government and other agencies and institutions throughout the world with valuable, up-to-date, customised information products and services of the highest quality.

The dedicated launch will place the five satellites in a common sun-synchronous orbit of 630 km, with the satellites equally spaced about 19 minutes apart in their orbit, ensuring frequent imaging of particular areas of interests.

The RapidEye system will image any area in the world at all latitudes between +/- 75 degrees within one day and cover the entire agricultural areas of North America and Europe within an average of five days. The multi-spectral pushbroom style imager onboard each spacecraft will image the Earth in five spectral bands, scanning a 78 km swath at 6.5m resolution.

This may sound like a familiar joke - but for the 5 RapidEye spacecraft built by SSTL a fit-check is an important preparation before the ultimate launch. The SSTL and MDA (the prime) launch teams visited the KB Yuznoye works at Dnepropetrovsk, April 14th – 18th, to conduct a spacecraft fit-check with the Dnepr launch vehicle.

Fit-check is an important event in the launch schedule as its purpose is to technically clear the way for successful integration of the flight spacecraft at the Cosmodrome.

The fit-check established that all the physical interfaces between the spacecraft and the launch vehicle were correct. During meetings, the launch teams were able to qualify the actual route of integration – an especially important activity when, as in this case, five spacecraft are being launched on a single launch vehicle.

So the answer, dear Space Blog reader is 5 - or at least 5 RapidEye spacecraft.