Small satellites for small nations

I don't think I posted this earlier. If so, mea culpa.

food for thought.

<snip>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2984182.stm

Disaster relief from space By Helen Briggs BBC News Online science reporter

When a lake high in the Andes threatened to flood earlier this year, sending a
river of debris on to the town below, there was little that could be to done
to avert a humanitarian disaster.

Thanks to images taken by a US space agency (Nasa) satellite, authorities were
at least able to monitor the situation and make plans to evacuate residents.

                 Hi-tech satellite imagery is
increasingly being used by international agencies and governments to help
deliver aid when disaster strikes.

But, while there is no shortage of
                 earth-observing satellites
orbiting the globe, they are not always in the right place at the right time
to take pictures.

This is about to change. Next month, three satellites belonging to Nigeria,
Turkey and the UK, will be launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.

The first satellite, from Algeria, was launched last November and is now
operational.

Together, they will form a constellation of micro satellites dedicated to
disaster monitoring that will cover the whole world every day for the first
time.

Smaller, cheaper

                 The satellites have been built by a spin-off company
from the University of Surrey in Guildford, southern England.

The firm, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, is leading the disaster monitoring
constellation, a collaboration of organisations in seven countries: Algeria,
China, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam and the UK.

What is different about these satellites is that they are smaller and cheaper
than most; this makes them more accessible to countries that don't have
sophisticated space programmes.

"Space has been the reserve of the large economies traditionally for the last
20 years," says senior marketing manager Paul Stephens.

"But we have been working to build small satellites at very low cost at Surrey
and these have been based on using commercial,
                 off-the-shelf components that are used in every day
computers and cars and so on.

"By cutting the cost by perhaps a factor of ten it means that many more
countries can afford to have presence in space that enables their own
scientists and people to use that resource in the country."

Knowledge transfer

Engineers from 12 emerging space nations, including Algeria, Nigeria and
Turkey, have spent months at the green
lake-side
campus where Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd is based.

Alongside the company's staff, they learn the technology to build and operate
satellites when they return home.

Once the satellites are in operation late this year, each nation will have its
own resource for geographical mapping, while contributing 5% of satellite time
free of charge for international disaster relief through the charity Reuters
AlertNet.

"If a disaster strikes, people need information very quickly and the existing
satellite
                 infra-structure has difficulty
responding within 24 hours," says Ian Downey, head of applications and market
development at the British National Space Centre in London.

He says Britain's contribution to the programme, the satellite
                 UK-DMC, is primarily to complete the constellation for
disaster relief work.

                 "The UK satellite will help to provide 24-hour coverage
of the globe for disaster relief and natural resource monitoring," he says.

Information from the constellation of satellites should also prove invaluable
to aid workers in the field.

                 Using hand-held devices, that will be able to get
up-to-date
images and maps wherever they are in the world.