2013 will witness the appearance of a new 400 kg mini-satellite on orbit with small-size high resolution radar onboard, which will open new possibilities for operational detailed imagery of emergency situations. Radar small satellite has been developed at the British company SSTL since 2009, as Luis Gomes, SSTL RS Department Head, reported at the last 13th MDDC Meeting in February.
Participants of the conferenceThe conference was attended by representatives from 6 DMC member countries (Great Britain, Nigeria, China, Algeria, Spain, Turkey), the European Space Agency, UK government departments, geo-informatics innovation companies from Japan, China, Netherlands and Russia.
The orbital fleet of DMC includes 7 small optical satellites: AlSat-1 (ALgeria, 2002), NigeriaSat-1 (Nigeria, 2003), UK-DMC and UK-DMC 2 (UK, 2003 and 2009), Beijing-1 (China, 2005), BilSat-1 (Turkey, 2006) and Deimos-1 (Spain, 2009). In 2011 NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-Х will be put into orbit.
DMC system enables daily imaging of any spot on Earth in multispectral mode (2, 3 and 4 bands of Landsat) at the spatial resolution of 32 m (1st generation satellite) and 22 m (2nd generation satellites) in the swath of 600 km wide.
National operators of small satellites allocate part of free resources in behalf of UN and International Charter for Space and Major Disasters for imaging emergencies, for example the Indian Ocean tsunami consequences (2004), Katrina hurricane (200), Haiti (2010) and New Zealand earthquakes (2011).
DMC Imaging International (DMCII) commercial company was established in the interests of commercial use of DMC satellites’ resources that was contracted to undertake activities to delineate areas of felled Amazonian forests, opium poppy plantations in Afghanistan, to evaluate productivity of agricultural regions.
Bangladesh. UK-DMC 2 image (UK Space Agency)The February conference summed up the results of the past decade of the DMC Consortium operations and discussed the vision for the next decade of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation. Simon Wright, the vice-chair of the Parliamentary Space Committee and Dave Williams, the Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, opened the meeting, noting that thanks to SSTL the Great Britain became a leader in small satellite systems. National operators of DMC satellites also took the floor, as well as space data users and developers of geo-information technologies.
ScanEx RDC Vice-President Olga Gershenzon spoke during the DMCC13 about the Russian space technology in the field of satellite imagery. Nowadays, the technology developed at ScanEx Center has been efficiently applied for monitoring emergency consequences in near real-time mode with satellite data broadly used for timely decision-making.
Results of the multi-satellite monitoring of fire situation and Russian rivers spring floods sparked overt interest of the conference participants. Considering climate and natural specifics of the country, monitoring of the territory conditions and progress in hazardous natural and human-induced processes plays a strategic role in prevention and mitigation of damage.
– Each year space images, received in near real-time, have been wider and wider used in Russian regions. Fire season is coming on and we will try to do our utmost to make the on-line satellite-based monitoring data of fires in Russia available for everyone, – said Olga Gershenzon.
SSTL company specializes in manufacturing of mini and micro satellites starting 1984. Of 34 launched satellites 25 are equipped with Earth observation sensors. New satellites Kanopus-B №1 (Russia) and BelKA-2 (Belarus) to be launched in 2011 have also been designed based on SSTL platform. The reason of the company’s success is the introduction of technology innovations parallel to reduction of project costs. SSTL company is not subsidized by the UK government, however it won several state contracts on the competition basis.
The DMC system will later on be replenished with new satellites: a 10 m resolution radar satellite with 100 km swath and an optical 350 kg 0.7 m resolution satellite with a scene size of 17 km. The price of all above SSTL projects is lower than that of other traditional satellites. The company also worked out EarthMapper project, aimed at regular global Earth imaging with high frequency and the resolution of 22 m without placing orders in advance.
SSTL’s activity demonstrates new innovation approach to remote sensing based on the application of private capital and new forms of international cooperation along with the reduction of financial expenses.
