Today at 12:30 in Brussels, the EC announced that the SSTL and OHB-System team has been selected by ESA to supply 14 navigation satellites for the deployment phase of the Galileo satellite navigation system in a deal worth 560m Euro.

The two companies agreed to work together as a “core team” on Galileo at the end of 2007, with OHB taking the role of prime contractor and builder of the spacecraft “bus” and SSTL taking full responsibility for the navigation payloads onboard the satellite that will form the heart of the Galileo navigation system.

SSTL Group CEO Dr Matt Perkins is delighted with the news:

The award of this contract is an important step for SSTL. Our satellites are already providing operational services for many government and commercial customers and we are pleased to have a major role within Europe’s flagship Galileo programme. The experience gained on GIOVE-A will help us to ensure the contract will be a success for the EC and ESA. This programme will also help to establish SSTL as a provider of communications and navigation satellites into other markets.

It was champagne all round at SSTL in Guildford as the news was announced, warming spirits despite worst snow for 30 years affecting the local area.

A jubilant SSTL’s Executive Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting, added

This award is great news for the UK space industry and once again confirms SSTL as a world leader in sophisticated satellites and payloads, building on its 25-year history pioneering small satellites with 34 already launched, truly changing the economics of space.

The first Galileo satellites produced under this contract will be launched from 2013. To help improve the overall schedule the team was authorised by the EC and ESA to initiate the procurement of long lead items for the full system during 2009 which will enable the team to make a quick start towards an operational Galileo constellation.

Continue reading "Green light for Galileo satellites"

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.

SSTL have successfully completed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for NigeriaSat-2. The 300kg satellite will provide Nigeria with valuable geographically referenced high-resolution satellite imaging for applications in mapping, water resources management, agricultural land use, population estimation, health hazard monitoring and disaster mitigation and management, and will enable Nigeria to join the second generation Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC).

The PDR marks a significant milestone for the project and reflects the confidence of Nigeria's National Space Research And Development Agency (NASDRA) that the design proposed by SSTL will achieve their mission objectives.

The next step for NigeriaSat-2 is the Critical Design Review (or CDR). In the interim, SSTL will finalise the design of the NigeriaSat-2 spacecraft and ground segment and plans for the full satellite manufacture will be implemented. This is an exciting period for the small satellite manufacturer, because NigeriaSat-2 will use a new, more agile satellite platform (pictured left).

The PDR included the kick-off for the NX spacecraft, which the Nigerian engineers being trained at SSTL and the University Of Surrey will build alongside NigeriaSat-2 under the supervision of SSTL engineers as part of their Know-How Transfer and Training (KHTT) scheme. The Nigerian engineers presented the work undertaken during their training at SSTL and are preparing for the next stage, Mission Design Review, which will take place in August.

Customer representatives from the National Space Research & Development Agency (NASRDA), along with their technical advisors, Telesat of Canada, attended seven days of meetings at SSTL's headquarters in Guildford as part of the PDR.

NigeriaSat-2 is scheduled for launch in 2009.

When making our blog entries we are always on the "look out" for interesting and unusual satellite applications. Well, this week we have something "completely different"! Eagle Island, in the Chagos Archipelago, is overrun by rats! And it's all thanks to the human population that inhabited the island until 1935. Before that coconuts where farmed to provide oil, principally for lamps, but with electricity becoming widely available the economics of transporting the commodity from Eagle Island just didn't stack up. So the Island was left to return to nature - the problem was the rats stayed and truly made the island their home!

Now Eagle Island, at 5 x 0.5 km is the second largest in the archipelago after Diego Garcia and the only island in the Great Chagos Bank to be infested by the Black Rat (other rat-infested islands occur in other island groups of the archipelago, and Diego Garcia is also heavily infested). Our friends the rats are seemingly preventing the breeding of seabirds which on other islands within the group are prolific, providing some of the most valuable seabird breeding areas in the entire Indian Ocean despite the tiny sizes of these islands. The rats were also maintaining a less than desirable vegetation state by preventing the regeneration of indigenous species and by feeding on the eggs and hatchlings of nesting marine turtles. There are no land birds on the island, probably in large part due to the rat presence. Anyway, that's all changing now and we can measure this by using satellite imagery.

So how were the rats controlled? Firstly a baiting grid 30 x 30m was established across the entire island based on lines cut by hand through the dense vegetation by the eleven expedition members over a 6 week period during April this year. These provided an excellent opportunity to conduct a Rapid Assessment Survey of the state of the environment of the entire island surface using the resulting 2,844 grid points as recording stations. Ten parameters including the type of vegetation were recorded at each station by four expedition members. This data is now being mapped and together with other expedition results will be the subject of a "state of the environment" report later in the year.

Satellite imagery has been difficult to come by, not least because there is seemingly little of general interest to the world on tiny uninhabited islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean. As the result satellites are rarely focused - if at all - on the island, and any resulting images are almost unobtainable. The CHRIS images from the Surrey Space Centre will accurately compare images taken in April this year with those due to be taken in October. The CHRIS images will also high quality maps for conservation management purposes.

Results of the assessments will be used in assisting future management processes in this far-flung location, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), not least in monitoring the effects of the rat eradication and any other interventions to be made in future conservation.

So it's bad news for the rats but good news for the Island's environment and sea bird colonies.