Wednesday, September 23, 2015

UrtheCast leaders describe new EO Satellite Constellation

UrtheCast went public on June 27 through a reverse IPO,
CIX Top 20 Alumni - Canadian Innovation Exchange
UrtheCast Releases The World’s First Full-Color HD Videos Of Earth
UrtheCast HRC Achieves IOC, Looks to Grow EO Presence - Via Satellite

[Via Satellite 08-12-2015] Vancouver-based UrtheCast has achieved Initial Operating Capability (IOC) for its High-Resolution Camera (HRC), Iris, aboard the International Space Station (ISS)  — the company announced plans in June to develop, launch and operate the a fully-integrated, multispectral optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) commercial constellation of EO satellites.

UrtheCast plans to deploy the coming constellation, comprised of an estimated 16 satellites (eight optical and eight SAR), over multiple launches slated from 2019 and 2020. The constellation will combine with the company’s cameras aboard the ISS as well as two recently purchased EO satellites, Deimos 1 and Deimos 2, to further the company’s goal of “democratizing the view of Earth from space,” according to UrtheCast’s website.


“We’ve always felt that UrtheCast needed to expand past the International Space Station,” UrtheCast CEO Scott Larson said in an earnings call Aug. 11 for the company’s second quarter. “Deimos was the first step and this constellation will complete the process,”


Q&A with Wade Larson, President and COO of UrtheCast

On
June 19, the company said it was developing a 16-satellite
constellation in partnership with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.
(SSTL). Eight of the satellites will carry high-resolution cameras and
the other eight SAR payloads. Three days later, UrtheCast announced it
was acquiring a European remote sensing company, Deimos Imaging, that
currently operates two satellites.


One of the key people overseeing this change in direction at
UrtheCast is Wade Larson, the company’s president and chief operating
officer since 2013. Larson came up with the original vision for
UrtheCast after nearly 20 years in the space industry, including work at
the Canadian Space Agency and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates.

- See more at: http://spacenews.com/wade-larson-on-urthecasts-pivot-from-station-to-constellation/#sthash.5lttVoJO.dpuf
 On June 19, the company said it was developing a 16-satellite constellation in partnership with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL). Eight of the satellites will carry high-resolution cameras and the other eight SAR payloads. Three days later, UrtheCast announced it was acquiring a European remote sensing company, Deimos Imaging, that currently operates two satellites.

One of the key people overseeing this change in direction at UrtheCast is Wade Larson, the company’s president and chief operating officer since 2013. Larson came up with the original vision for UrtheCast after nearly 20 years in the space industry, including work at the Canadian Space Agency and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates.

How will your constellation stand out from the growing number of current or planned competitors?

A key point is the sensor suite. What we’re proposing here is a fully integrated electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar constellation. That by itself is already unique among many of these smallsat constellations that are coming out.

The second is the concept of operations. We’re proposing to fly the radar satellite and the optical satellite in very close tandem formations, about a minute apart, at an altitude of 450 kilometers. There’s a lot of real-time interaction between the satellites based on onboard processing.

The third thing is to really stress is that, strictly speaking, we’re not putting up smallsats. We actually think that the sweet spot is somewhere between what people currently call smallsats, which, depending on the definition might be 200 to 300 kilograms, and the traditional class of satellites that might be a couple of tons. We think the sweet spot is somewhere between 600 and roughly 1,000 kilograms per satellite. That’s the size at which you can get the advantages of low-cost satellites in terms of some of the new technologies that are coming out, particularly electronics, but you can still protect aperture.

So it was aperture that was driving you to this somewhat larger class of satellites?

Absolutely. You can’t get around the physics. It has to be big enough to collect the photons necessary to get down to the resolution you want. We’re targeting a resolution of 0.5 meters for our satellites, on the optical side.

Is there a similar argument for the SAR sensor?

The argument is even stronger, because the power requirements are so great. On the radar side, radar is power hungry. What is really unique about our technology — and we’ve patented this — is the ability to image simultaneously in quad-polarization L-band and single-polarization X-band from the same sensor. The ability to do that with relatively low power is something that’s quite special here. But you need a lot more power than you can get from a 200- or 300-kilogram class bus. That’s pushing us up to just north of 1,000 kilograms.

Are you planning to use the same bus for both spacecraft?

We’re aiming for maximum standardization across both. The eight optical satellites all look the same, and the eight radar satellites all look the same. There are huge similarities in terms of bus design and other things, because you get the economies of scale and the efficiencies by doing so.

Obviously, there are differences. For example, the radar birds are bigger, so you need more propulsion, so you have bigger tanks. They’re a little heavier, so you might need a different solution in terms of how you point the spacecraft. 
On-Demand Satellites Can Shoot High-Def Video of Your Car - Scientific American

Daniel Lopez, director of technology, said that UrtheCast had already archived close to a petabyte of data, even before officially launching its services. Future customers will be able to call up imagery from any time and place of coverage on demand, a feat made possible, Lopez said, by cloud computing services. “We couldn’t do this several years ago,” he noted.

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