SSC99-V-2 Microsatellite Constellation for Disaster Monitoring

Abstract. Every year natural and manmade disasters cause devastation around the World through loss of life, widespread human suffering, and huge economic losses. Remote sensing satellites can contribute to mitigation of this devastation through early warning, event monitoring, and after-the-event studies. Unfortunately, present satellite remote sensing systems do not provide the high temporal resolution required for this activity. Additionally, the images they provide come at high cost per scene. The Surrey Space Centre at the University of Surrey has designed a constellation of remote sensing microsatellites that delivers 35 m ground resolution over a 600 km width scene in up to four spectral bands. Cost-benefit tradeoffs show that such images can fulfil many needs with the disaster monitoring community. However, spatial and spectral resolution are not the primary requirements for disaster monitoring; Disaster monitoring users demand high temporal resolution. Emerging manmade or natural disasters must be monitored on a daily basis if mitigation efforts are to be effective. Low-cost microsatellites applied in large constellations provide the only cost-effective solution to this design driver. This paper reports the details of Surrey’s Disaster Monitoring Constellation, describing the key subsystem technologies which deliver the desired price/performance ratio, and the overall system design which exploits the low unit cost of microsatellites to deliver a large constellation in affordable and useful increments