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Surrey's DMC satellites reach targeted orbit station

March 30, 2004

All four satellites in the international Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC), co-ordinated by SSTL, have reached their designated orbit stations in preparation for full operation of this unique network of Earth observation microsatellites.

The DMC satellites were launched in two stages: the first in November 2002 for Algeria (AlSAT-1) and the second in September 2003, when satellites were launched for Nigeria (NigeriaSat-1), Turkey (BILSAT-1) and the UK (UK-DMC). The satellites needed to be moved into precisely the same 686km orbit and then phased (spread out) around the orbit plane in order to provide adjacent imaging passes over the surface of the Earth.

Orbit phasing has been achieved through a series of firings by each satellite's onboard electro-thermal propulsion system, with accurate orbit position and velocity data provided by on-board GPS receivers. Both the onboard resistojet propulsion systems and GPS receivers were designed and built by SSTL. The satellites have sufficient on-board propellant to maintain their orbit stations for at least 5 years.

AlSAT-1, BILSAT-1, NigeriaSat-1 and UK-DMC are now at their nominal phase slots of 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees around the DMC orbit which enables the constellation to image anywhere on the surface of the Earth with a 24-hour revisit.

SSTL is currently installing mission planning systems across the consortium of DMC satellite owners to move from the initial individual national satellite operations to the fully co-ordinated constellation tasking, imaging, data retrieval and processing. This is due to become operational during the summer so that any DMC partner may schedule a series of images over a site of interest sharing the resources of all four satellites and the dispersed ground stations. Once the co-ordinated constellation systems are commissioned and tested, the DMC Consortium will be ready to begin supplying daily images for support of disaster response, initially in partnership with Reuters AlertNet.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd

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