Surrey satellite review completed

 

A satellite manufacturer in Surrey has successfully completed its Baseline Design Review for a Geostationary Mini-satellite Platform (GMP).

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd's (SSTL) development project, worth €2.28 million, forms part of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems funding stream for ESA/Industry partnerships (ARTES 4).

Developments within this ARTES 4 project are part of the wider GMP development programme at SSTL that is applying the company’s low-cost, rapid-schedule approaches to the GEO (Geostationary Earth Orbit) market.

GMP is designed for a 10-year mission life, capable of supporting a 200kg, 2.5kW power payload.

The design review was successfully completed with no outstanding actions and SSTL received very encouraging feedback from an ESA review, which followed an accelerated study phase in which the baseline design of the ‘transfer orbit’ variant of the GMP was defined and marked the end of Phase 1 of the project.

Phase 2 will look in more detail at aspects of the structural, thermal and propulsion subsystem designs.

Group Executive Chairman, Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, is confident that the economics of space could be changed by rethinking the approach to geostationary satellite design.

"We are determined to offer the industry’s shortest order-to-orbit timescales for geostationary platforms," said Sir Martin.

"At the current rate of technology development in communications, operators want to see their payloads in orbit as soon as possible."

Opportunity to move ahead

SSTL sees the ESA contract as a valuable opportunity to progress its on-going Geostationary Mini-satellite Platform work, which started under the British National Space Centre’s MOSAIC (MicrO Satellite Applications In Collaboration) programme.

Work completed under MOSAIC enabled SSTL to develop GIOVE-A for ESA, the first satellite of the Galileo navigation constellation.

At an orbital height of over 23,000km, GIOVE-A also constituted a successful first move ‘beyond LEO’ for the company.

SSTL’s Dr Kathryn O'Donnell is confident that the GMP developments provide new possibilities: "The move from LEO and even MEO to geostationary orbits demanded a rethink rather than a simple scaling-up of existing technologies.

"Our team of engineers, the majority of whom have significant experience on GEO telecommunications missions, have taken a top-down approach to the GMP design.

"This promises a dramatic reduction in project timescales whilst incorporating proven SSTL heritage designs and processes."

Based in Guildford in the UK, SSTL is owned by the University of Surrey (85 per cent), SSTL staff (five per cent), and SpaceX of the USA (10 per cent).

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