Small satellite manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) has today announced completion of the development phase of its new low-cost Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite system. Called NovaSAR-S, the system offers customers coverage of any spot on Earth in all conditions – seeing through cloud cover across both day and night.
The 400-kg NovaSAR-S design combines SSTL’s flight-proven SSTL-300 platform with an innovative S-band SAR payload, developed in collaboration with Astrium Ltd, who will be responsible for supplying the payloads. The challenge has been accommodating the power and processing requirements within a small, low-cost satellite platform. NovaSAR-S’s 3m x 1m phased array antenna was developed by space-borne SAR specialists at Astrium Ltd, and has now been successfully trialled using an airborne demonstrator. The SSTL-300 platform hosting the payload is an adaption of SSTL’s very-high-resolution imaging NigeriaSat-2 mission, which was launched in August.
“Based on highly efficient S-band solid state amplifier technology, NovaSAR-S has been designed to provide detailed imaging performance for a variety of orbits,” said Luis Gomes of SSTL. “It offers space-based radar capability to customers who might not have considered it possible – all for the equivalent cost of a traditional low cost optical Earth observation mission.” Read More
