TIM FURNISS / LONDON
Three continents unite to build a satellite constellation that will monitor natural and manmade disasters on Earth
Eight organisations from Africa, Asia and Europe have formed a consortium to create a satellite-based Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) of Earth observation microsatellites positioned in low Earth orbit.
The DMC consortium is led by the UK's Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL), and includes the British National Space Centre, which is funding the SSTL UK-DMC satellite; Centre Nationale Techniques Spatiales of Algeria; China's Ministry of Science and Technology; the National Space Research and Development Agency of Nigeria; Thailand-based Mahanakorn University of Technology; Turkey's Tubitak-Odtu; and Vietnam's National Centre for Science and Technology.
Each organisation is building a microsatellite to form the first constellation dedicated to monitoring natural and man-made disasters, exchanging satellite data to givean Earth imaging capability to monitor catastrophic events and dynamic phenomena.
The DMC will provide daily re-visits to areas of interest by at least one satellite, providing 32m resolution multispectral images and 4m resolution panchromatic images.
SSTL is building six of the microsatellites while the Mahanakorn University will construct a ThaiPaht 2.
Algeria's AISAT-1, which will be launched this year as a piggyback payload on a Russian Cosmos 3M booster, was built under a "know-how transfer and training" programme at SSTL, which also involves Nigeria and Turkey.
UK-DMC, Turkey's Bilsat 1 and the Nigeriasat 1 may be launched together next year aboard a Russian Dnepr converted submarine-launched missile. The other satellites will be launched in 2004.
Source: Flight International
