ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dourdain and Science Minister Rt Hon. David Willetts attended the unveiling of SSTL's new £10M, 40,000sq. ft. Kepler Technical Facility on 25th January.

David Willetts said: “The continued success of SSTL is a clear sign that our space industry is thriving. This impressive, high-tech new facility is already manufacturing some of the most advanced satellites in the world, boosting growth and helping the UK stay ahead of the game in space technology.”

The building is co-located with SSTL’s headquarters building in Guildford, UK and will house around 40 permanent staff and up to 100 further project specific staff from across the company at peak test and integration periods. It provides two 125 cubic metre walk-in thermal chambers, a seismic test platform, 15,000kg & 3,200kg monorail cranes, 10,000kg & 8,000kg gantry cranes, and reinforced floors, allowing flexibility for integration and testing of both small and larger spacecraft.

• ESA Director General praises UK space innovation during SSTL’s Kepler Building unveiling -- UK Space Agency
• ESA DG and UK Science Minister open Kepler facility -- SSTL

(Source: New Scientist)

SSTL announces the winning apps to be installed on the Nexus One smartphone which will form the control system for the STRaND-1 microsatellite, due for launch next year:

• Space apps: smartphone at heart of satellite mission -- New Scientist
• Winners of Space App Competition announced -- SSTL
• @SurreyNanosats Twitter feed

SSTL has announced plans to build a new class of low-cost synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. The NovaSar-S spacecraft will be 3m x 1m in size, massing roughly 400kg, and are expected to cost around 50 million euros including launch, a small fraction of existing large SAR missions.

Luis Gomes, head of earth observation at SSTL: ""The cost associated with generating the power pulses has always been a big issue, and managing that power,"

"We've addressed this by using new technology - new types of amplifier from commercial terrestrial applications in telecommunications.

"Another issue that has prevented us from doing Sar previously was the technology in terms of data processing. Sar generates a lot of data - 20-30 times more data per second compared to our original optical data processing systems.

"But because optical systems have become more complex as we've gone to higher resolutions, we now have the systems that can cope with SAR."

• Surrey to start making radar satellites -- BBC News

(Source: BBC News)

Guildford satellite imagery provider DMCii and Beijing-based company 21AT have signed a deal for three UK-built DMC-3 earth observation satellites with a resolution of less than a metre.

The Chinese will use the pictures to monitor land use and land-cover changes. In particular, the data will enable regional governments to plan better the extraordinary rate of development in China's cities.

The satellites for the DMC-3 constellation, as it is called, will be manufactured by DMCii's parent company, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL). It will cost some £110m to build, launch and insure these platforms.

• China and UK strike space deal -- BBC News online

(Source: RLV News)

An SSTL manager says they expect to launch some of their satellites on SpaceX Falcon-9:

• British satellites to ride SpaceX Falcon-9 -- Florida Today

(Source: Jonathan Amos -- BBC News)

SSTL plans to place an Android smartphone in orbit later this year. The phone will be integrated as part of a 30cm-long nanosatellite, and will be tested to see if it will function successfully as the spacecraft's command processor. The mission is called STRaND-1 (Surrey Training Research and Nanosatellite Demonstration), and continues SSTL's efforts to make maximum use of COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) components.

"Modern smartphones are pretty amazing," said SSTL project manager Shaun Kenyon.

"They come now with processors that can go up to 1GHz, and they have loads of flash memory. First of all, we want to see if the phone works up there, and if it does, we want to see if the phone can control a satellite."

The mobile model being used will be a standard, sub-£300 ($450), smartphone available in High Street stores.

"We're not taking it apart; we're not gutting it; we're not taking out the printed circuit boards and re-soldering them into our satellite - we're flying it as is," Mr Kenyon explained.

"And, in fact, we're going to have another camera on the satellite so we can take a picture of the phone because we want to operate the screen and have some good images of that as well."

Shaun Kenyon of SSTL's Mission Concept Division discusses the application of off-the-shelf technologies such as MEMS, 802.11 wireless networking and USB interconnects in responsive smallsat mission design.

• Shaun Kenyon talks tiny tech and satellite speak -- Engineering Britain

(Source: The Engineer)

Prof. Sir Martin Sweeting, chairman of SSTL, takes an optimistic view of human spaceflight and lunar colonisation

"’Only three years ago, if you said there was water on the Moon, people would have taken you off to the loony bin,’ said Sweeting. ’Now they’ve discovered large amounts of water there, we can take that water to generate fuel so that we can then start to travel further and have sustainable food resources. This could make those plans of returning to the Moon a possibility. But to do that and for the UK to be involved, we have to change the economic model.’"

"Sweeting’s vision is that the UK will ’own’ large areas of space as countries, including China and India, vie to establish colonies on the Moon over the coming decades. His plan is to surround the Moon with small satellites to give astronauts internet and communication capabilities."

Sweeting sees a key role for the UK in establishing the infrastructure for such efforts:

"He likens the situation to the Gold Rush of 1848, when thousands of people rushed to California in search of their fortune. ’In reality, the people who made the money were the guys on the railways who set up the hotels, provided the shovels, the water they didn’t make money overnight, but they made very good business. That’s where the UK should be, providing the infrastructure.’"

...as I said back in 2009:

"If there is to be a “gold rush” of commercial space development, the United Kingdom should position itself to be in the business of making and selling shovels."

• Interview: Prof. Sir Martin Sweeting -- The Engineer