The Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) has delivered 27 satellites in 26 years - all successfully launched. Frank Hoban of NASA had once said "You make it cheap enough so if you lose one, you haven't gone bankrupt. That's what this is all about. I think we're driving toward commercial space with this…and that's the name of the game." The game has been played by the SSTL since the early 80' when in 1981 a group of academic and research staff working in what was then the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Surrey, UK, conceived, designed and manufactured the UoSAT-1, a 50kg micro-satellite built in under 30 months at a cost of less than 0.5M pounds. The success of this mission led to a second microsatellite, UoSAT-2, being built and launched in 1984.

Prof. Sir Martin Sweeting, CEO of SSTL along with his colleagues Dr. Chakravarthini Saaj and Dr. Yang Gao participated in the recently concluded 57th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), at Hyderabad, India from 24-29th September. The presentations by Dr. Chakravarthini and Dr. Yang were an eye opener about the research, design and development activities at SSTL. Dr. Yang gave a presentation on UK MoonLITE and Mooraker Missions, as a result of the SSTL and Surrey Satellite Center (SSC) study. Dr. Chakravarthini was successful in initiating collaborative discussions with scientists from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Opportunities to participate in ISRO's Chandryaan-2 robotic mission were discussed. This includes contributing to the micro-rover technology and miniaturised payload by Surrey. Also, ISRO has expressed interest for knowledge transfer through collaboration with Surrey and contribute to hard impactor/lander system for future lunar mission studies.

SSTL is also to launch two new enhanced Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) satellites in the fourth quarter of 2008. The Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) was designed as a proof of concept constellation, capable of multispectral imaging of any part of the world every day. It is unique in that each satellite is independently owned and controlled by a separate nation viz. Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey, UK and China, but all satellites have been equally spaced around a sun-synchronous orbit to provide daily imaging capability. Although DMCs' headline objective is to support the logistics of disaster relief, its main function is to provide independent daily imaging capability to the partner nations. The five satellites that presently constitute the DMC are all designed and built at SSTL. Through the support of the British National Space Centre, SSTL owns and operates the UK satellite in the constellation. The latest in this series of DMC are the Deimos-1, which has been built for Deimos SL (Spain) and SSTL’s UK-DMC2 will be launched next year.

Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, CEO of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited speaking on 'The Future Mission', in an exclusive interview with GIS Development.
Excerpts from the interview, recorded on 9^th October 2007. The audio file is 5.11 minutes long. ‘Listen here’

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