The Development Status of the First Demonstration Satellite of Our Commercial Small Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite Constellation

The Development Status of the First Demonstration Satellite of Our Commercial Small Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite Constellation

Utah State University, Logan, UT

Expectations for SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites that can observe a target area through clouds and during nighttime are emerging, especially in Asia where high cloud cover rate prevent from the satellite monitoring with optical sensors. We are now developing a small SAR satellite based on technologies of ImPACT (Impulsing PAradigm Change through disruptive Technologies) program. This program aims to develop a responsive earth observation system with the small SAR satellite, originally target for disaster monitoring. We will build a constellation of the small SAR satellites to realize short term revisits, shorter than one day to take advantage of SAR sensor that can acquire data regardless of weather and time in a day. We expect the constellation expands needs of the SAR data to business and private decision making, and develop a market for commercial use. We have almost completed the development of mission FM components of the first demo satellite. The bus system is under EM testing and FM procurements. We will launch the first demo satellite in Q1 of 2020. We are already preparing to build the second satellite and will make six satellite constellation until 2021. Our final goal is to build a constellation of 25 satellites.