SEA designs nanosat kit
Known collectively as the OmniSat architecture, SEA has conceived a complete nanosatellite 'kit of parts'.
These parts can be reconfigured to build nanospacecraft that suit a range of Earth orbiting commercial and scientific activities including:
• Global ship and aircraft tracking
• Store and forward communications for remote areas
• Low cost space technology demonstration
• Searching for potentially hazardous near Earth asteroids
Dr. Lucy Berthoud, OmniSat project manager at SEA, commented: “Faster, better and cheaper is hard to accomplish in the space industry, where long development times are the norm, because each new mission is designed from scratch. The OmniSat architecture is designed to cut the time from concept to launch down to a year, which will enable a new wave of exciting missions to be developed.”
Carlos Corral van Damme, ESA technical officer for the project, said: “The capabilities of nanosatellites and their payloads have significantly increased due to the recent advances in miniaturisation technologies. The study has shown that the OmniSat concept is highly promising, especially for constellations and for missions requiring a quick turn-around time."
Dr. Claire Parfitt, OmniSat Systems Design Lead, added: “The flexibility of OmniSat’s modular architecture means that the same parts can be reconfigured to fulfil the requirements of many different kinds of space mission, including those that haven’t even been thought of yet.”
Andrew Bacon, OmniSat Electrical Design Lead, said: “The rapid-fit electrical system of OmniSats is inspired by desktop PCs, which have a wide range of off-the-shelf standard size cards that slide into motherboard slots to increase functionality. This means that the electronics can be assembled and tested by trained technicians very quickly.”
