Broadcast journalist Evan Davis is a busy man of many hats. When he’s not on Radio 4’s Today Programme he can be spotted presenting Dragon’s Den or Made In Britain – both of which share his passion for British entrepreneurism and innovation. It therefore comes as no surprise that the Open University has appointed Evan Visiting Professor of the Public Understanding of Business, where he recently delivered his first public lecture, Reflections on the British Economy.



Made in Britain viewers’ eyes were opened to a hidden world of British high-tech manufacturing and engineering that Britain is actually very good at – banishing the view that nothing is made in Britain anymore. It was a refreshing look at the positives amidst the UK PLC’s current economic woes. Evan’s lecture on 1st November follows same theme high-tech British manufacturing in the international arena, focusing specifically on three key areas:

• the continuing contribution of manufacturing.


• the UK’s comparative advantage in intellectual property


• the threats from emerging economies as they develop tradable services.

SSTL’s Stephen Gibson enjoyed his lecture, but little did he know that when he posed a question that Evan Davis would share a “soft spot” for SSTL. It turns out his father was not only an electronic engineer at the University of Surrey, but moreover the Phd supervisor to SSTL founder Sir Martin Sweeting as he designed the first low cost small satellites that our University spin-out has pioneered for the last 25 years. As a teenager, Evan even saw the original UoSAT in the University of Surrey and he is said to be a keen follower of SSTL’s progress.

You can watch Evan’s lecture on the Open University website, and followers who are interested can also hear Evan’s response – and revelations! – in this video from the Q&A session.

UK- DMC- 1, one of the first generation Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellites, is to be retired from service after over 8 years in orbit. UK-DMC-1, was launched on 27th September 2003 with fellow Constellation satellites NigeriaSat-1 and BILSAT-1 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome on board a Kosmos 3-M rocket. It has exceeded its original 5-year design lifetime by over 50% with an impressive 8 years and 1 month of operation. UK-DMC-1’s imaging workload has now passed to UK-DMC2 and the new generation of DMC satellites, providing data continuity for DMCii’s customers.

UK-DMC-1 was part of the first-ever microsatellite Earth Observation constellation, which introduced remarkable EO abilities for both national and international benefit. The constellation is the work of a pioneering international co-operation consortium led by SSTL and made up of six countries: Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey, Spain and the United Kingdom.



In addition to UK-DMC-1’s remote sensing capability, the SSTL100 based satellite also carried several experimental payloads that have proved groundbreaking in themselves. The Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit (CLEO) was a joint project between NASA Glenn Research Center, SSTL and Cisco Systems. It tested delay-tolerant networking in space and led the way for developments towards an interplanetary Internet system.

The GPS Reflectometry experiment on UK-DMC-1 was the first dedicated experiment to demonstrate the viability of using reflected GPS signals from space to measure geophysical parameters, such as ocean weather. For the first time, spaceborne signals were received by the satellite from reflections off sea, ice, snow and land and a follow-on instrument will be flying on TechDemoSat-1. UK-DMC-1’s Resistojet technology was also the first of its kind. This water-based propulsion system proved to be both an efficient and low cost alternative to the use of hazardous propellants which require infrastructure and can cause complications at high pressures.

UK-DMC-1 retired gracefully; like all recent SSTL missions it was prepared for its ‘End of Mission’ as a precautionary measure to minimize space debris. This process began in September 2010 and involved using up its remaining propellant to passivate the satellite, and also lowering the orbit to reduce its remaining time in space before burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. When this work was completed the satellite continued to be fully operational, continuing to relay image data down to SSTL’s groundstation.

Why retire now? Well, the satellite’s battery ages over the mission lifetime and has now reached a point, well beyond its original mission design life, where it is unable to provide enough power to support full payload operations. With this in mind, the SSTL Spacecraft Operations Team have suspended the UK-DMC-1 workload, and the satellite is now only monitored periodically from SSTL Mission Control in Guildford.

A group of students from Royal Grammar School, Guildford is exploring the possibilities of a scientific phenomenon to evaluate its potential for propelling a Tumbleweed Rover through the hills and valleys of Martian terrain.

The project is SSTL’s contribution to this year’s Engineering Education Scheme. EES is an annual event run by The Engineering Development Trust, the largest provider of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) enrichment activities for British young people. The EES links teams of Year 12 pupils with local companies to provide students with first-hand experience in science, engineering and technology that will enable them to make informed decisions about their future.

This isn’t the first time SSTL has sponsored the scheme. Two years ago SSTL supported a team from Farnborough college on a study to "Investigate possible ways of detecting earthquake precursor signals using satellites, to help us move from disaster monitoring to disaster mitigation". The constructive results of the study have been fed into the Mission Concepts team that evaluates new ideas in the innovation underbelly of SSTL.

This year, Sahand Ghanoun from the Flight Software Team is mentoring four students from Royal Grammar School, Guildford to study a "Low cost propulsion system utilising the Crookes radiometer effect". Their study will look into the possibility of using the Crookes radiometer effect as a supplementary source of propulsion for the NASA Tumbleweed Rover.

The spherical Tumbleweed Rovers could be used to explore the valleys of Mars that wheeled probes are unable to reach, relying on the Martian wind to move them around, see this video. SSTL’s Mission Concepts would like to know if the Crookes radiometer effect could provide an alternative means of propulsion when the Martian wind is insufficient to move the Rovers.


The Crookes Radiometer Effect can be observed when metal vanes in a partial vacuum (like the Martian atmosphere) move when exposed to light. The vanes are painted white on one side and black on the other. When exposed to light or infrared radiation the vanes move because the black side of the vane becomes hotter than the white and transfers more heat energy (and therefore, kinetic energy) to the air molecules behind the vane resulting in a new torque in that direction. In addition, another force is exerted by the flow of the gas molecules from the cooler side to the hotter side in an effect known as thermal transpiration.

A combination of wind power and the photo-thermally induced principle on which the Crookes radiometer works would cost less than solar panel powered propulsion and might make the tumbleweed rover concept viable in a shorter timeframe.

The project kicked off on Friday, 4th November, when Sahand presented to the four RGS students and their teachers and gave them a tour of SSTL facilities. The programme will run until April 2012 when the team will show off their work and a report to a team of assessors.

Satellite navigation (GNSS) experts from SSTL are contributing remote sensing and satellite know-how to a pioneering UK-led project that aims to improve forecasting of adverse weather conditions at sea.

Using satellite data to measure ocean roughness has been an area of interest for SSTL since an experimental GNSS receiver payload was launched onboard its UK-DMC satellite. During the past few years, the GNSS receivers team has investigated the use of GNSS reflectometry – the use of reflected navigation signals from space to characterise ocean weather – with promising results, and produced a prototype instrument in collaboration with partners in the UK that will be developed into a payload for the TechDemoSat-1 technology demonstration satellite.



Smarter shipping
In addition to shipping, many marine operations such as offshore oil platforms and renewable energy projects depend on high quality information on sea-state (wave height, period, direction, steepness) for economic and safety decision making. However, the information currently available is based on atmospheric/ocean models and lacks sufficient temporal and spatial resolution.

Martin Unwin, Principal Engineer commented,

Wave conditions are always changing and can vary tremendously over just 100km, or over a period of two hours. This also makes modelling and forecasting very difficult, so the most immediate use of this data is more likely to be what we call ‘nowcasting’ – assessing current conditions thoroughly before commencing an operation.

Another problem with conventional methods is that the use of buoys provides good information around the coast and shipping lanes, but is simply not economical nor practical for charting the vast oceans of Earth. This is one area where satellites, with their global view, are ideally equipped.

All hands on deck
Recognising the opportunity for an improved system, the UK’s Technology Strategy Board has provided co-funding for the WaveSentry project. WaveSentry will address shortcomings on two fronts:

• By exploiting new data sources that include SSTL’s novel satellite remote measurements of wave steepness.


• By integrating data from all sources in a single system (including real-time buoy and ship data).

This multi-disciplinary project will bring together partners from all areas to develop and apply techniques to substantially enhance the integration of diverse data sources to offer improved data about adverse sea-states to a number of markets. SSTL and its partner National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton, are investigating the potential for spaceborne GNSS Reflectometry measurements to contribute towards knowledge of sea state in combination with other data sources.

You can keep up to date with the WaveSentry project on the the Marine Southeast website.