TIM FURNISS / LONDON
Eight mini-satellites will fly aboard three Cosmos M boosters over two years under contract with Rosoboronexport
The UK's Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) has signed a contract with Russia's Rosoboronexport for three launches of Polyot-built Cosmos M boosters from Plesetsk between 2002 and 2004. They will carry eight mini-satellites built by the UK company.
Seven satellites are destined for the international Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) project and one for a UK experimental imaging satellite, TopSat.
Cosmos boosters, widely used for the deployment of military satellites, have launched two SSTL-built payloads - SNAP-1 and Tsinghua-1.
The DMC consortium, which comprises Algeria, China, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and the UK, will operate the satellites to provide daily, co-operative observations of natural and man-made disasters.
The first launch, of an Algerian satellite, is set for later this year, with subsequent flights over the next two years. It is yet undecided how many satellites each Cosmos booster will carry.
The satellites will return 32m- resolution multispectral images and 4m-resolution panchromatic images, which will be distributed to relief teams by the Reuters AlertNet Foundation.
SSTL is building six of the seven satellites for the DMC. The other is to be built in Thailand. All are based on the SSTL microsatellite bus, as is TopSat.
TopSat is one of three projects funded under the British National Space Centre's (BNSC) Mosaic small-satellite programme, which is designed "to help transfer the UK's world lead in small satellite technology from the academic into the scientific and commercial markets", says the BNSC.
TopSat - also funded by the UK Ministry of Defence - will carry a 2.5m-resolution panchromatic and 5m multispectral imaging system from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, providing data to UK domestic users.
SSTL has been selected by Orbital Sciences to supply an SGR-10 global positioning system receiver for the US Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology mission, which is part of NASA's Space Launch Initiative.Source: Flight International
