“Eye in the sky” capability provides valuable security and environmental benefits to national and regional authorities, but this often comes at a high cost that restricts access to a privileged few. SSTL’s nexgen satellite system is able to respond rapidly to tasks, imaging objects of less than 1m in size and provide frequently updated images for applications in surveillance, agriculture, or land use change mapping. Head of International Business, Steve Young, commented, “SSTL can now provide a satellite system that can image the entire land area of the Earth within 30 months, at a resolution better than 1m, for less than $50M. This makes space much more accessible to regional and government programs seeking more independent native capabilities.”
Such new systems form part of SSTL’s space-based security solutions for national and regional security. Its integrated solutions enable real-time early warning and a reduction in time scales from threat-detection to termination in the field. SSTL has more than 20 year’s experience designing and operating civilian and commercial earth observation missions. One such example is the CHRIS satellite imager which is flown onboard ESA’s PROBA mission. The imager has been providing hyperspectral data to the scientific community for the last 7 years, supporting resource management, deforestation and forest husbandry, precision farming, aerosol monitoring and water quality assessment. Following the success of CHRIS, SSTL has developed the new CHRIS-2 imager which will provide vital data for mineralogists and ecologists alike, defining spectra for mineral exploration, information currently provided by aircraft reconnaissance and on-the-ground surveys. The Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) and the recently launched RapidEye constellation demonstrate SSTL’s ability to provide systems equivalent to LandSat and other wide area imaging systems at a fraction of the cost of conventional large satellites. SSTL-built satellite, TopSat, is providing 2.5-m imagery of the Earth, having successfully achieved its original mission objective as a technology demonstrator for the U.K. Ministry of Defence.