Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has signed an agreement with Space-Eyes (Channel Logistics USA, LLC Delaware, doing business as “SpaceEyes. LLC”) to provide a share of the tasking and data acquisition capabilities from NovaSAR-1. SSTL will lease imaging payload capacity to Space-Eyes for the lifetime of the satellite, designed to be in excess of 7 years, and will retain ownership of the spacecraft and perform in-orbit satellite operations from its UK Headquarters. Space-Eyes will integrate the SAR images with contextual maritime threat evaluation data for the maritime domain with its CATE™ Analytics technology to deliver tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Phil Brownnett, SSTL’s Managing Director, said “I am delighted to welcome Space-Eyes to the NovaSAR mission partners club. It is very gratifying to see our NovaSAR spacecraft being tasked to acquire data across the globe, for diverse applications across both land and sea.”
Space-Eyes provides Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite collections across all weather and lighting conditions. The data is integrated with related geospatial and contextual maritime data and analysed automatically by CATE™ for supply chain risks and maritime domain awareness threats, addressing emerging opportunities in autonomous shipping, service provider driven block-chains and asset security in energy's downstream and upstream markets.
NovaSAR-1 is the world’s first commercial SAR satellite to be operated at a 10:30 equator crossing time, providing time diversity for radar observations by affording increased daylight imaging opportunities in addition to night acquisitions. The SAR payload has a dedicated maritime mode designed with a very wide swath width of 400km to enable the monitoring of the marine environment and provides direct radar ship detection information simultaneously with AIS ship tracking data to assist with the identification and tracking of sea-going vessels.
NovaSAR-1 was designed and manufactured by SSTL, with an S-Band SAR payload developed by Airbus Defence and Space in Portsmouth, UK and an Automatic Identification Receiver supplied by Honeywell Aerospace.
Mission partners previously signed up for capacity from NovaSAR-1 include the UK Space Agency, Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), DOST-ASTI (Philippines) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).