Session
Session XI: Year in Review II
Location
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Abstract
Imaging at night time, or under the clouds has been the preserve of large powerful satellites until recent years, and now technological advances have finally made it possible to miniaturise Synthetic Aperture Radar missions in an affordable way. The NovaSAR-S spacecraft leverages a common small satellite bus coupled with a radar payload focused on a specific range of promising commercial applications. Through the inclusion of a novel wide-swath mode, and Automatic Identification of Ship receiver, a range of maritime applications are enabled. An innovative funding model was used in order to finance the mission, with a number of geographically spaced users each having fractional ownership of the spacecraft and payload tasking rights. The spacecraft can therefore look to individual owner-operators as their own spacecraft. NovaSAR-1 was launched in late 2018 and first results of this S-band SAR spacecraft with AIS ship detection are provided.
Business Under the Clouds
Utah State University, Logan, UT
Imaging at night time, or under the clouds has been the preserve of large powerful satellites until recent years, and now technological advances have finally made it possible to miniaturise Synthetic Aperture Radar missions in an affordable way. The NovaSAR-S spacecraft leverages a common small satellite bus coupled with a radar payload focused on a specific range of promising commercial applications. Through the inclusion of a novel wide-swath mode, and Automatic Identification of Ship receiver, a range of maritime applications are enabled. An innovative funding model was used in order to finance the mission, with a number of geographically spaced users each having fractional ownership of the spacecraft and payload tasking rights. The spacecraft can therefore look to individual owner-operators as their own spacecraft. NovaSAR-1 was launched in late 2018 and first results of this S-band SAR spacecraft with AIS ship detection are provided.
