A high performance EO small satellite platform & optical sensor suite

This paper describes a new high performance cost effective Earth Observation Platform, the SSTL-300 and associated optical sensor suite, offering a 7-year mission lifetime with a very high operational availability, for a mission cost an order of magnitude less than commercial high resolution Earth observation spacecraft. The paper will detail the SSTL-300 main payload, a very high-resolution imager with panchromatic multispectral channels. The paper will also outline an additional payload, the Medium Resolution Imager (MRI), which offers the widest swath of any comparable Earth Observation spacecraft. Earth images can be geolocated with high accuracy without the need for ground control points. Simultaneous high- and medium- resolution imaging is possible, coupled with either on-board lossless data compression for store-and-forward operations or near real-time imaging & down-linking for a range of targets close to the ground station. The SSTL-300 offers a range of imaging modes, including: strip mapping, fast response scene capture and stereo imaging offering swath widths up to 60 km at high-resolution. Details of the nominal (sun-synchronous) orbit for the SSTL-300 will be provided stressing the balance between single spacecraft and constellation (multiple cooperating spacecraft) performance. The latter requires an accurate and reliable, yet low cost propulsion system which SSTL has developed, but is commonly featured on low cost small spacecraft.