Session
Technical Session III: Year in Review
Abstract
Launched in July 2015, the DMC3 constellation was designed with a “smallsat mentality” and represents the coming of age of small satellites for Earth Observation, offering performance that until a few years ago could only be found in satellites costing ten or twenty times more. The low cost of the individual satellites made it possible to deploy a constellation of 3 spacecraft, for daily global access, without any compromises in performance, at a fraction of the price of equivalent single EO satellites. The constellation started generating data 10 days after launch and has been in regular operation since the last quarter of 2015 and some results are presented in this paper. On the same launch as DMC3, SSTL deployed a prototype “video from space” satellite. Designed and built in under 8 months, Carbonite-1 demonstrated the use of very fast, low cost techniques to design and build satellites for “super-constellations”. In this paper, results from Carbonite-1 are presented and we undertake a discussion on the merits of DMC3 versus Carbonite-1 and what they offer to the EO community. We also discuss the future evolution of the DMC3 spacecraft design (the SSTL-300 S1) as well as the future plans for Carbonite.
DMC3 and Carbonite-1: Two Sides of Small Satellites
Launched in July 2015, the DMC3 constellation was designed with a “smallsat mentality” and represents the coming of age of small satellites for Earth Observation, offering performance that until a few years ago could only be found in satellites costing ten or twenty times more. The low cost of the individual satellites made it possible to deploy a constellation of 3 spacecraft, for daily global access, without any compromises in performance, at a fraction of the price of equivalent single EO satellites. The constellation started generating data 10 days after launch and has been in regular operation since the last quarter of 2015 and some results are presented in this paper. On the same launch as DMC3, SSTL deployed a prototype “video from space” satellite. Designed and built in under 8 months, Carbonite-1 demonstrated the use of very fast, low cost techniques to design and build satellites for “super-constellations”. In this paper, results from Carbonite-1 are presented and we undertake a discussion on the merits of DMC3 versus Carbonite-1 and what they offer to the EO community. We also discuss the future evolution of the DMC3 spacecraft design (the SSTL-300 S1) as well as the future plans for Carbonite.
