{"id":80708,"date":"2013-07-03T21:33:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T13:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/surrey-satellites-us-facility-opens-doors-to-nasa-partnership\/"},"modified":"2013-07-03T21:33:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T13:33:23","slug":"surrey-satellites-us-facility-opens-doors-to-nasa-partnership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/surrey-satellites-us-facility-opens-doors-to-nasa-partnership\/","title":{"rendered":"Surrey Satellite\u2019s US Facility Opens Doors to NASA Partnership"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
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NASA\u2019s deep space atomic clock is one of three projects to transform space communications, deep space navigation and in-space propulsion capabilities.<\/p>\n

Image credit: NASA\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

U.K.-based Surrey Satellite Technology<\/b> is no stranger to delivering small satellite missions, in fact, since the company\u2019s birth in 1981, it has already launched 41 of such spacecraft. Until recently, Surrey hadn\u2019t tapped into the U.S. market from its new Colorado facility, but that\u2019s about to change according to John Paffett, CEO of Surrey Satellite Technology U.S<\/b>.<\/b> division (SST-US), a subsidy of the U.K. company.<\/p>\n

     Optimism and excitement resonate among company officials as upcoming launches develop. \u201cIt\u2019s the first of our U.S. missions to go through our new facility in Colorado. It\u2019s a great first step for the group,\u201d he said during an exclusive telephone interview with SatelliteTODAY.com<\/i> <\/i>on July 1.<\/p>\n

     \u201cOne of the things we found was that there were a large number of payloads that have been developed that didn\u2019t have flight opportunities,\u201d he said noting that SST-US can now fill that void with its corporate headquarters and satellite manufacturing located at the new facility providing full mission capabilities. \u201cWe were quite surprised by the level of interest and demand,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

     The process of coordinating satellite missions often presents technicians and managers with significant challenges. But for officials at SST-US, these tasks were not insurmountable, according to Paffet. By understanding constraints and customer requirements, he said SSI-US was not only able to overcome these obstacles, but also increase payload capacity size. \u201cWe decided to come up in [capacity] size so we could increase what we could offer to us customer base,\u201d Paffett said. \u201cRather than having a fixed solution we\u2019ve tried to work with payload providers to fit their payloads,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

     One of the key offerings of the new U.S. headquarters includes customer payload integration, something that has caught the attention of NASA\u2019s<\/b> Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). \u201cIt\u2019s a low risk satellite platform, very attractive price point, and from a company that has a demonstrated track record for delivery of satellites,\u201d Paffett said.<\/p>\n

     NASA has selected SST-US for the flight of the Deep Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) payload under the sponsorship of NASA\u2019s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). Under the agreement, SST-US will provide a hosted payload flight opportunity for the NASA DSAC payload on its upcoming OTB mission, which is scheduled for a 2015 launch. DSAC will fly on the SST-US-owned-and-operated Orbital Test Bed (OTB) satellite, the first spacecraft to be integrated at the new SST-US facility.<\/p>\n

     Allen Farrington, manager of the deep space atomic clock project at NASA\u2019s JPL, agreed with Paffett during an exclusive interview with SatelliteTODAY.com<\/i> also on July 1. He said that the primary advantage of this type of payload \u201cis a cost savings over the purchase of a semi-custom spacecraft,\u201d noting that NASA had considered several other competitors of Surrey.<\/p>\n

     While declining to provide specific names of competing companies, Farrington said that NASA looked at \u201cmany companies, including traditional spacecraft vendors, commercial hosting vendors, and small spacecraft vendors,\u201d he said. Ultimately, Surrey came out as the winner in the deals for several reasons, Farrington said, including that, \u201cthe mission opportunity Surrey offered \u2013 the Orbital Testbed Mission \u2013 was the only mission that met our specific orbital\/spacecraft environment requirements on the schedule that we had,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

     Under the terms of the agreement SST-US will provide a hosted payload flight opportunity for the NASA DSAC payload on its upcoming OTB mission, scheduled for launch during 2015. DSAC features a miniaturized, ultra-precise mercury-ion atomic clock. In-orbit demonstration of the precision timing and navigation capabilities of the DSAC instrument is a key requirement for NASA\u2019s pursuit of deep space exploration missions which require higher-precision data collection and autonomous radio navigation for time-critical events such as orbit insertion or landing.<\/p>\n

    \u00e2\u20ac\u00a8Farrington said that NASA has very specialized requirements including orbital altitude, spacecraft environments, and available spacecraft resources.\u00e2\u20ac\u00a8\u201dFor example, we had to be below the GPS constellation at MEO but above 500 km. The spacecraft had to have a particular pointing error and be quiescent with no wheels, no significant torquer action or thrusters for six days straight. We require about 80 W of OAP and 50 kg of available mass,\u201d Farrington added.<\/p>\n

     The OTB satellite, owned and operated by SST-US, is currently in design and manufacture stages. The spacecraft will qualify and demonstrate an array of payload equipment and subsystem technologies, in addition to the DSAC payload. SST-US will integrate the OTB satellite in its new facility in Englewood, Colo. <\/p>\n

    While Farrington, said NASA\u2019s JPL is \u201cconstantly considering various payloads and mission opportunities depending on NASA\u2019s needs and mission requirements,\u201d SST-US will also take a similar approach to future missions \u2013 for both the company and its customers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019s deep space atomic clock is one of three projects to transform space communications, deep space navigation and in-space propulsion capabilities. Image credit: NASA U.K.-based Surrey Satellite Technology is no stranger to delivering small satellite missions, in fact, since the company\u2019s birth in 1981, it has already launched 41 of such spacecraft. Until recently, Surrey hadn\u2019t tapped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}