Small Satellites

Small Satellites
quo vadis?
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting OBE FRS FREng
Executive Chairman, SSTL
Director, Surrey Space Centre
AIAA Space 2012, Psadena, California
© SSTL
Predicting the future…
Alan Turing, in a 1950 paper, had predicted that “by the
turn of the century, computers would have a billion
words of memory”.
© SSTL
Moore‟s „Law‟
Electronics, Volume 38, Number 8, April 19, 1965
“Cramming more components onto integrated circuits”
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore
observed that the number of
transistors on a chip was increasing
exponentially: doubling every two
years – or 10 times every 6.5 years
© SSTL
Moore‟s „Law‟ has held for 40 years
CPU transistor counts 1971-2008
© SSTL
Not just Mflops but also Mbytes
Hard Disk Drive (HDD) capacity
(note log scale!)
Capacity
GBytes
1980
© SSTL
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
and also imaging…
Courtesy Kodak
© SSTL
Revolution in manufacturing process
The enormous commercial
market for industrial and
consumer electronics has
driven manufacturing
processes for:
• high volume, density
• low unit cost
• high reliability
This has resulted in
dramatically reduced
component failure rates
COTS has become the
new „Hi-Rel‟
© SSTL
The basis of the „smallsat revolution‟
Exploiting Moore‟s Law and the enormous commercial
investments in microelectronics, we can now build highly
capable, low-cost, rapid-response and reliable operational
small satellites – built using the latest „COTS‟ terrestrial
technologies…
Changing the Economics of Space
© SSTL
What are „Small Satellites‟ ?
= f (Mass + Time + Cost + Utility)
Innovative use of the latest technologies
© SSTL
30 years of Space @ Surrey
SSTL: spin-out from University of Surrey (1985) – now owned by EADS (2009)
508 staff; £100M revenues (2011); £500M exports; 20% y-y growth
Small satellites for operational missions (SSTL) and services (DMCii)
end-to-end: design, manufacture, integration, test, launch services, orbital operations
rapid response (15-18 months), low cost (£10-20M), high capability
©SSTL
Surrey Space Centre
Surrey Space Centre: ~100 academic researchers specialising in space
engineering, small satellite techniques & academic training (MSc, PhD).
SSC+SSTL: synergy of academic research and commercial exploitation
©SSTL
39 small satellites
in 31 years
© SSTL
Early microsatellite missions
LEO digital store-&-forward communications
SIGINT
Technology demonstration/verification
Space science
Earth observation
© SSTL
Constellations & Swarms
„Constellations‟ and „Swarms‟ of small
satellites achieve an affordable capability:
 Rapid revisit – increased temporal
resolution
 Contemporaneous data gathering – data
merging
 Particularly for Earth observation &
surveillance
©SSTL
International Constellation: DMC
Disaster Monitoring Constellation
Novel International Collaboration – 6 countries
 Individual satellite ownership
 Collaborative operation
 Data sharing and exchange
 Daily imaging worldwide (600km swaths)
 National, disaster and commercial use
©SSTL
DMC: Large area imaging
©SSTL
DMC in the International Charter
International charter space and major
disasters
Activations nearly every week
 200 rapid response images per year
from DMC
 typically same day delivery
©SSTL
DMC: Katrina (USA)
Nigeria-DMC provided one of
first images of Katrina
©SSTL
Agriculture - Precision farming
©SSTL
Earth Observation business
Commercial, Government and Humanitarian
Land usage
Mineral features
20
©SSTL
High Resolution (4m GSD) Imaging (2005)
©SSTL
Data Fusion: simultaneous MS & PAN
© SSTL
Very High Resolution (2.5m GSD) Imaging (2011)
launch: 17 August 2011 on Dnepr from Yasny






2.5m PAN
5m 4-band multispectral
19m 4-band multispectral 320km swath
300kg
7 year life
$15M s/c
For NASRDA (Nigeria) – significantly enhancing Africa‟s
ability to monitor its environment
©SSTL
©SSTL
2.5-metre GSD pan-sharpened m/s
©SSTL
©SSTL
Navigation/Timing minisatellites
SSTL
 GIOVE-A: first Galileo satellite to secure
frequency allocations for Europe‟s navigation
system
 Built by SSTL in 30 months and €30M,
launched on time; 660kg
 6+ years operations in MEO – exceeding its
2.5 years planned operational lifetime
©SSTL
GALILEO: FOC for EU/ESA
OHB + SSTL
 GALILEO Full Operational
Constellation
 22 satellites
 SSTL navigation payloads
 OHB platforms
 Delivery for launch in 2013-14
©SSTL
SSTL Small Geostationary platform
SSTL „small‟ platform for MEO, GEO, HEO &
Interplanetary missions
Key parameters:
 15 year design life
 modular & flexible design
 1500-2500kg (wet mass)
 payload 300kg, 4.5kW,
~32 active transponders
Flight heritage:
 ESA GIOVE-A (2006-12)
 Development with ESA ARTES-4
Ready for flight in 2014
©SSTL
The next generation…
New commercial business model
for providing leased EO capacity
services through DMCii
1-metre resolution EO imaging
constellation
3 satellites to be launched in 2014
100% imaging capacity of first 3
satellites already contracted for 7
years for £115M
© SSTL
Radar remote sensing: NovaSAR
NovaSAR
 Low-Cost (£45M) S-band SAR
satellite
 Maritime surveillance
 De-forestation, flood monitoring
 4 Modes: 6-30m resolution
 Airborne demonstrator flown
 400kg – ready in 2014
 SSTL & ASTRIUM UK
©SSTL
 Constellation to complement DMC
So, are we following Moore‟s Law?
Early microsatellite EO missions
 Poor location / timing
 Poor pointing control
 Necessitated the use or 2-D arrays, limited swath
Later missions improved attitude control & used GPS
positioning
Early GG Use of pushbroom arrays
 Wider swath
stabilised EO
smallsats
Progression in Ground Sampling Distance for SSTL missions
10000
3-axis
stabilised high
performance
EO smallsats
GSD (m)
1000
100
10
1
07-May- 31-Jan- 28-Oct- 24-Jul- 19-Apr- 14-Jan- 10-Oct90
93
95
98
01
04
06
Year
©SSTL
GSD trend
Follows Moore‟s Law (or better)
10000
1000
100
GSD
10
1
1990
0.1
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
Year
©SSTL
But it is not just GSD…
EO missions also drive data volume
Two orders of magnitude improvement per decade
– data return
– data storage
Microsatellite mission data rates (Mbps) and data volumes
(kbyte) generally tracking “Moore‟s Law” (or better)…
1000
1000000
100
100000
10
10000
1
1990
1993
1996
1999
2002
2005
2008
1000
0.1
100
0.01
10
0.001
1
1990
0.0001
data rates (Mbps) - v- year
1993
1996
1999
2002
2005
data volumes (kbytes) -v- year
©SSTL
Can it continue…?
The laws of physics – resolution requires aperture
10000
1000
100
10
1
1990
0.1
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
?
 The size of the optical telescope for higher spatial
resolutions with useful MTF, signal-to-noise and swath
requires large apertures.
 The limit for a small satellite (300kg) with conventional
optics is probably ~0.5 m GSD
©SSTL
… so… for higher spatial resolution
…… distributed sparse aperture
 “Virtual satellite” formed by a network of co-orbiting satellites
 Deployable small mirrors – flying in formation
 Distributed /sparse apertures – larger effective apertures
 Distributed adaptable architecture – different tasks
 Future replacement for very-high resolution satellites (or
Hubble, JWST) at lower cost?
©SSTL
Latest Surrey nanosatellite…
On-board
SmartPhone
SSTL & SSC STRaND nanosatellite
launch in 2012
©SSTL
Next generation space telescopes
SSC R&D programme with CalTech and NASA/JPL
to demonstrate autonomous in-orbit robotic
assembly and reconfiguration of a multi-mirror
space telescope
“Mirrorcraft” based on STRaND nanosat
with RDV and docking technology
©SSTL
Addressing space debris
©SSTL
SNAP-1 nanosatellite
SMA
(km)
SMA Derived
from On-Board
GPS Data
Tsinghua-1
SNAP-1
RD
V
© SSTL
1998
Beyond LEO……
for small satellites……
©SSTL
Future lunar exploration & business
Explore the use of small satellite techniques
to lower the cost and increase the tempo of
exploration
Prepare the commercial infrastructure for
sustained human presence on the Moon –
and later Mars
Lunar surface internet & mobile comms
positioning / navigation
prospecting
© SSTL
So…. Quo vadis..?
Small satellites
 Cost-effective, affordable solutions to focussed user
needs
 Complementing „super-satellites‟ where performance
rather than price is critical
 Exploiting „consumer‟ COTS technologies
 Doing more, more often … with less
 Networking (constellations/swarms) provide spatial or
temporal coverage
 No „one-size-fits-all‟ – nano/pico through to micro/mini
depending on mission requirements
 Self-organising swarms/clouds and in-orbit
reconfigurable assembly is the future
©SSTL
So…. Quo vadis..?
BUT
Launch availability & cost is seriously constraining the
development and exploitation of smallsats
DELTA
ARIANE TSYKLON
ZENIT SS18/Dnepr COSMOS ATHENA SOYUZ ATLAS
?
©SSTL
Conclusions
Modern consumer electronics have enabled and revolutionised
small satellite capabilities – now performing operational missions
A disruptive exploitation of technology that
is changing the economics of space
©SSTL
©SSTL