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posted by martyb on Monday September 17 2018, @01:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the Eye-in-the-sky dept.

Two UK satellites have been launched by India's ISRO:

The first all-British radar satellite has launched to orbit on an Indian rocket. Called NovaSAR, it has the ability to take pictures of the surface of the Earth in every kind of weather, day or night.

The spacecraft will assume a number of roles but its designers specifically want to see if it can help monitor suspicious shipping activity. Lift-off from the Satish Dhawan spaceport occurred at 17:38 BST.

NovaSAR was joined on its rocket by a high-resolution optical satellite - that is, an imager that sees in ordinary light. Known as S1-4, this spacecraft will discern objects on the ground as small as 87cm across. Both it and NovaSAR were manufactured by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited of Guildford.

Formerly live coverage.

There are a few interesting aspects to this story: the satellite is completely British-built--it seems unusual in the era of global manufacturing. Second, it was put into orbit on an Indian rocket, which points up India's growing launch capabilities. Third, the satellite is tasked with tackling suspicious shipping, with implications for smuggling, piracy, and the environment.


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 17 2018, @03:14PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 17 2018, @03:14PM (#736001) Journal

    with implications for smuggling, piracy, and the environment

    How will the satellite detect copyright infringement?

    A copyright work may be rightfully used. It may be properly licensed by the copyright holder or registered agent. The use might be fair use. Even courts sometimes have trouble determining fair use. So how can a satellite determine it?

    (maybe Hollywood should stick to using the term copyright infringement)

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 17 2018, @03:21PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 17 2018, @03:21PM (#736002) Journal

    If the satellite has an orbital period of about 90 minutes, then you would have a series of 90-minute pictures of where a slow moving ship is.

    But . . . each orbit doesn't cover the same part of the earth surface as the previous orbit. This doesn't sound like a fleet of satellites. So how often would a ship come under the watchful eye of the satellite?

    Similarly, how often would this satellite have a view of my back yard?

    living in a sea of microwaves

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday September 17 2018, @07:43PM (1 child)

      by Osamabobama (5842) on Monday September 17 2018, @07:43PM (#736144)

      I found a lot more information at the ESA mission page [esa.int]. It describes the orbit as 'sun-synchronous,' so it will only see things at a specific local time. With a 90 minute orbit, there would be 16 passes per day, or double that if you count both the daytime and nighttime passes. Depending on which sensor mode is in use, the swath width varies from 15 km to 750 km, so this thing won't be gathering detailed imagery of the entire Earth every day. Furthermore, the radar is fairly high power relative to specified average power use, so it is powered with 'super capacitors' that allow only 2-3 minutes sensor use per orbit.

      All that being said, this site refers to a 2015 launch in the future tense, so it may not be current data, or could even be a previous version of the satellite that has a similar name. I haven't done much research...

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      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 17 2018, @09:31PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 17 2018, @09:31PM (#736204) Journal

        site refers to a 2015 launch in the future tense, so it may not be current data

        Satellite design probably gets frozen long before launch. Before manufacturing even.

        Unlike the software world, they probably don't make changes up to the last minute. Everything has to be tested. The entire mission is very expensive and a fatal flaw could, unsurprisingly, be fatal, which would be a surprise. Nobody wants to be the one that screwed up a billion dollar mission.

        Anything that emits electromagnetic radiation probably must get approvals from many agencies, both foreign and domestic.

        I strongly suspect a 2015 document is pretty close.

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        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Monday September 17 2018, @03:50PM (4 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 17 2018, @03:50PM (#736015)

    The article actually says it is the first all-British radar satellite - not sure if that is true or not but I am pretty sure that it isn't the first all-British satellite of any sort.

    UK actually has quite a few satellite building companies, and many more component builders.
    Galileo project is, for example, going to hurt pretty bad if they lock the UK companies out due to Brexit.

    What UK does lack (although that might change in future, personally I doubt it) is launch capability. Currently we are in ESA and therefore have Ariane access, but post Brexit we will have sod all, so if we are chucked out of Galileo and storm off to build our own nav-sats (as has been suggested) it was said there was nothing to get them up there unless we want to be dependent on US Russia or China (which would kind of defeat the point).

    Enter India. Now if you were the UK and wanted to pick a friendly country independent of the superpowers and the EU who might also aspire to have independent nav sats and might want to assist or collaborate - India would probably be top of the list. And what a coincidence - they have the launch capability that we don't. If anything, it is the British satellite on Indian rocket that is the most interesting aspect of the story.

    • (Score: 2) by slap on Monday September 17 2018, @04:48PM (1 child)

      by slap (5764) on Monday September 17 2018, @04:48PM (#736050)

      Ariane is going to launch (someday) the James Webb telescope, so my guess is that they would launch anything (within reason) for anyone for enough money. But India can launch it for *far* less.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 17 2018, @09:33PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 17 2018, @09:33PM (#736207) Journal

        Ariane may be able to compete on costs, but it will always be around. For national security. Or something.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday September 17 2018, @06:27PM

      by richtopia (3160) on Monday September 17 2018, @06:27PM (#736110) Homepage Journal

      I'm having trouble finding details on what "All-British" means. It may include the sub components: the logic circuits for example may be designed in the UK (a cluster of Raspberry Pis perhaps).

      This level of domestic sourcing is often specified for national security equipment, and given the resolution of this satellite I wonder if there are alternative motivations for launching it. Something used for tracking open-water piracy seems qualified for more nefarious surveillance.

    • (Score: 2) by rleigh on Monday September 17 2018, @10:37PM

      by rleigh (4887) on Monday September 17 2018, @10:37PM (#736256) Homepage

      There's a surprising amount of satellite tech companies in the UK. For example, just across the road from where I live in Dundee is a company called STAR-Dundee which designs and manufactures the hardened microcontrollers and test equipment for SpaceWire (https://www.star-dundee.com/products). Their stuff is used on nearly every commercial satellite launched for creating custom redundant network topologies to link all the various bits of instrumentation, compute and comms gear together on a satellite.

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