http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM55I638FE_Benefits_0.html
From ham-radio to Galileo, small satellites spell success
4 November 2005
Next month should see the launch of the first Galileo satellite which
will be paving the way for Europe's global positioning service. The
GSTB-V2A spacecraft has been built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.
(SSTL) in the UK, a company which was created in 1980. Euronews has been
to visit the former university students who pioneered the use of small
satellites.
"My interest in satellites started during the Apollo era in 1969,"
remembers Professor Martin Sweeting, today Chief Executive Officer of
SSTL. "I was watching that just before I went to university." The
University of Surrey in Guilford, 50 km from London, was to be the
springboard for a spin-off company which now employs 250 people.
"In 1985 everybody was building bigger and bigger satellites and we were
saying the contrary: smaller and smaller," recalls Sweeting. "People
were saying it was an interesting but crazy idea with no future. But
over the last 20 years, small satellites have offered a more flexible
and economical way of getting to space. Today small satellites are a
fashionable activity, and a major part of the space scene."
SSTL has been involved in over twenty different projects. Many of the
first spacecraft built at Surrey were for amateur radio enthusiasts. But
over the years, the company attracted a wide field of users, from Earth
observation for countries without the financial resources to have
conventional satellites, to specific civilian or military applications
on demonstrator missions for major powers.
To bring down production costs and to cater for its clients’
requirements, SSTL resorted to industrial techniques and materials used
in the car industry or in computing – the COTS (Commercial off The
Shelf) approach.
SSTL's reputation worldwide led to its selection by the European Space
Agency to provide one of the two first satellites for the Galileo
constellation.
"After we developed the 300 kg mini satellites, which was really
stretching our capabilities upwards, we realised that we could respond
to the ESA call, taking that platform, developing it a bit further and
putting on some of the Galileo payload. It would offer a very low cost
alternative to the conventional way of doing things."
The resulting satellite, GSTB-V2/A, is today completing its final space
environment tests at ESA's Technology and Research Centre in the
Netherlands. In a few weeks, it will be heading for Baikonour for a late
December Soyuz launch.
Its final destination will be a 23,000 km orbit around the Earth. The
satellite will validate new critical technologies and will transmit an
experimental signal on radio frequencies attributed by the International
Telecommunications Union.
Galileo, to be fully deployed by 2008, will eventually have a 30-strong
constellation of satellites in three orbital planes. It will be
interoperable with the US GPS and the Russian Glonass systems but with a
highly accurate 1-metre precision, so far only attainable with military
systems.
Galileo signals will offer numerous civil applications – an estimated
market of 1.8 billion users in all sectors of daily life. The most
obvious will be localisation of, and two-way communication with,
mobiles. Road vehicles, ships and aircraft will be able to navigate with
greater precision and in areas where no terrestrial aids are available.
"The challenge for us was to design and manufacture GSTB-V2/A, a quite
sophisticated spacecraft, in a very short period of time," says John
Paffet, development project manager at SSTL. "In approximately 27 months
we have gone from a concept stage, then the design, the manufacturing,
tests and the integration stages for the launch next month."
SSTL prides itself on the rapidity of development and reliability of its
products. However, Martin Sweeting recognises that the company's
approach still has to overcome certain reticences.
"In order to have low cost and rapid response, we have to adopt a much
more industrial system, more akin to the information technology
industry. It is difficult for large space agencies to change their mind
set to actually use small satellites, the laptops of space, as opposed
to the main frame computers of space."
--
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