South East satellite payload collaboration completed
Oxford Space Systems and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd have completed the build of an innovative satellite payload.
The Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload is comprised of a stowage-efficient deployable antenna from OSS and a high bandwidth radar instrument and RF system from SSTL. It has been designed exclusively in the UK supported by a grant from the UK Space Agency's National Space Technology Programme.
Dr Paul Bate, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency, said: “The UK has been a pioneer in the small satellite market and is at the forefront of Earth observation technology and antenna design and development for this class of spacecraft.
“We’re backing companies like Oxford Space Systems and SSTL to deliver new space capabilities that will help us tackle challenges, including disaster monitoring, urban planning and transport management.”
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SAR is a type of active data collection where a sensor produces its own energy and then records the amount of that energy reflected back after interacting with the Earth. The technology has applications in surveillance, change detection and “big data”. By using networks of small satellites, images can be developed at a faster rate regardless of the time of day or weather.
OSS has developed an innovative Cassegrain reflector antenna with a metal mesh surface known as the “Wrapped Rib” antenna, a 3m diameter parabolic reflector which stows into a small volume, making the architecture compatible with ~150kg spacecraft.
Sean Sutcliffe, Chief Executive of Oxford Space Systems said: “We are delighted with the outcome of this collaboration with SSTL and UKSA. The highly innovative OSS Wrapped Rib Antenna, combined with SSTL’s digital and RF electronics provides a compact SAR payload for smallsat missions and we are already seeing strong international customer interest for this product”.
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Operating at high frequency, the Wrapped Rib antenna is the ideal solution for low-cost, high resolution SAR missions using SSTL’s CarbSAR platform. The project successfully demonstrated deployment of the main reflector ribs and secondary reflector mast with a subsequent RF test of the system’s performance.
Having a large, scalable, stowable and lightweight, reflector antenna provides a number of benefits in designing small radar satellites for particular applications. A reflector antenna can also significantly simplify the radar electronics, making it ideal for implementing radar on much smaller spacecraft such as SSTL’s CarbSAR platform.
Andrew Haslehurst, Chief Technology Officer of SSTL, said: “SSTL pioneered the development of small satellites from the early 80’s combining initiative technologies with a different approach enabling smallsat missions.
“Embedding the SAR electronics directly into our core avionics simplifies the architecture, combined with the impressive stowage volume of the Wrapped Rib has enabled SSTL to develop a very capable CarbSAR product providing high resolution X-band SAR imaging capabilities day, night and whatever the weather”.
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