Small is the new BigWhite Paper

Nano/Micro-Satellite Missionsfor Earth Observation andRemote Sensing

Technology Strategy Board

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“SMALL IS THE NEW BIG” Chad Anderson, Chris Brunskill, Corentin Guillo

Satellite Applications Catapult, Fermi Avenue,Harwell Oxford, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QR, UK

21th May 2014

Foreword

This White Paper is a Capture Plan for Nano/Micro-Satellite Missions for Earth Observation and Remote Sensing

Purposes. It describes current technology and market trends and illustrates the impact those emerging technologies

will have on the space sector by reversing the balance between upstream and downstream for commercial EO

exploitation. This document is intended to be communicated to U.K. stakeholders such as the Technology Strategy

Board or the UK Space Agency in order to un-block the current blockers and maximise the chance for UK industries to

capture the resulting markets.

Reduced launch costs, miniaturization of technology, and standardization are driving increased interest in small

satellites1. In 2013, the number of small satellites (weighing less than 50 kg) launched was nearly as many that were

launched in the previous three years. Indeed, the adoption of constellations by new businesses and corporations intent

on activities such as monitoring terrestrial assets is driving a forecast of 2000-2750 small satellites to be launched from

2014-2020, more than four times the number launched from 2000-2012.

An example of standardization is the CubeSat, a Nano-Satellite measuring 10 centimetres on each side, and weighing

slightly more than 1Kg. In order to create more capable hardware, these CubeSats are often combined like building

blocks into larger spacecraft (3U CubeSat, 12U CubeSat being common combinations). While CubeSats are adequate

for student projects focusing on scientific research or technology demonstration, 3U, 6U, and 12U satellites provide

the capability demanded for commercial exploitation from industry.

An illustration of the commercial exploitation of Nano-Satellites is provided by the San Francisco-based start-up: Planet

Labs, who has raised more than $65 million from private equity in two round of funding in 20132. After launching their

first 3U CubeSat constellation in March 2014, they’ve already booked more than $65 million in customer contracts.3

Planet Labs’ Flock-1 constellation, made up of 28 “Doves” (3U CubeSats) in their nest waiting for their deployment

from the ISS by NanoRacks

Micro-Satellites, weighing 10-500 kg, have also attracted development efforts by companies and organizations,

particularly as advancing technologies enhance the capabilities of those spacecraft.

1 Generally accepted definitions of satellite mass classes under 500 kg: Small-Satellites from 500Kg to 100Kg, Micro-Satellites from 100Kg to 10Kg, Nano-Satellites from 10Kg to 1Kg and Pico-Satellites less than 1 Kg 2 http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/planet-labs 3 All Set for Takeoff: Silicon Valley Startups Redefine Space Imaging Market, Forbes, 26 Feb 2014

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Another demonstration of the demand for small satellites is Skybox Imaging. The Palo Alto based start-up has raised

$91 million from a series of funding rounds since 20094 to launch and deploy a constellation of 24 Small-Satellites

weighing about 100Kg. Their prototype, Skysat-1, is currently in orbit and providing 1080p high-definition video of

Earth. Skybox Imaging focuses its commercial services on the timely access to high resolution images and videos.

Screenshot of the 30 frames per second full motion black & white video in 1080p high-definition from Skybox

Imaging first mission: Skysat-1.

The Catapult is conducting early efforts to identify and quantify small satellite opportunities in the UK related to the three primary satellite verticals: Earth Observation (EO), Communications (Coms), and Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT). Based on forecasts by SpaceWorks and Euroconsult, in addition to Catapult’s own internal estimates, the most likely domain to be disrupted by the small mission technology trend is EO, which is also demonstrated by the success of high-profile Silicon Valley based start-ups like Planet Labs and Skybox Imaging. As a result, the Catapult is particularly interested in this area and is focused on three initial market opportunities within this vertical: 1) small satellite manufacture, 2) EO data sale, and 3) resulting downstream applications.

1) Upstream Technology – Persistent Nano/Micro-Satellite Supply Chain

To date, complex development processes and unattractive economics have slowed the adoption and exploitation of Nano/Micro-Satellites. However, recent examples demonstrating the benefits of EO solutions as well as the emergence of new application areas have helped to overcome some obstacles related to their manufacture, launch, and operations.

The market for Nano/Micro-Satellites is growing quickly. In 2013, the number of small satellites (weighing less than 50 kg) launched was nearly as many as were launched in the previous three years. Indeed, the adoption of constellations by new businesses and corporations intent on activities such as monitoring terrestrial assets is driving a forecast of 2000-2750 small satellites to be launched from 2014-2020, more than four times the number launched from 2000-2012.5

4 http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/skybox-imaging 5 Spaceworks 2014 Nano / Microsatellite Market Assessment

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Nano/Micro-Satellite Launch History and Projection

While only 12% of small satellites were for EO and Remote Sensing purposes in 2009-2013, this proportion is expected to grow dramatically. Not only are the number of small satellites expected to treble over the next three years, the number of Nano/Micro-Satellites purposed for EO and Remote Sensing is expected to grow from 12% to 52% as shown in the figure below (i.e. from 24 to 338 spacecraft).

Nano/Micro-Satellite Trends by Purpose

A recent market study by Euroconsult agrees with these growth estimates, forecasting the number of Earth

Observation satellites (non-meteorology) launched by civil government and commercial entities to more than double

over the next eight years to 290 satellites and £17.4 billion in manufacturing revenues over the period, an 84% increase

over the previous decade.6 The market for EO satellite manufacturing is estimated to reach £2.1 billion in 2020 alone.

While Euroconsult does provide a comprehensive industry analysis and forecast in the growing EO sector, it does not

distinguish between Nano/Micro-Satellites and their larger brethren. We can however extrapolate the value of the

Nano/Micro-Satellite manufacturing market based on the number of small satellites forecasted by SpaceWorks and a

representative cost per satellite of £250,000.7 Therefore, 1,040 Nano/Micro EO satellites (52% of 2,000), at an average

cost of £250,000 per satellite, give an estimated market value of £260 million over the next six years, or approximately

£100 million in 2020 alone.

6 Euroconsult, Satellite-Based Earth Observation, Market Prospects to 2022 7 Based on a survey of existing small satellite manufacturers

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With World-leading UK Nano/Micro-Satellite manufacturers such as Clyde Space and Surrey Satellites Technology Ltd

(SSTL), the UK is well-positioned to capture a large portion of this market. But the upstream satellite manufacture

market is merely a tool for enabling the much larger downstream application market.

Beyond manufacture, this paper focuses on how to most effectively enable UK industry to exploit those tools to deliver

EO Data Sale and Downstream Applications.

2) EO Data Sale – Disruptive Nano/Micro-Satellite Constellations

Conventional imaging satellites are the size of a van, weigh tonnes, and cost hundreds of millions to build and launch. As a result, there are only a handful of operators, and the world fleet of commercial imaging satellites consists of less than 20 (excluding the 28 Nano-Satellite constellation that was just launched by Planet Labs). Additionally, commercial satellite operators have not embraced a proactive approach to drive innovation in the sector, and tend to only take pictures when their operators receive orders from customers. Indeed, a limited number of large expensive satellites has resulted in a product that is expensive and untimely, and as a result, has not been adopted by the applications market.

Representation of EO Satellites Size and Imaging Capabilities from Current EO Data Providers8

8 Source Nature International Weekly Journal of Science

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However, it is expected that new entrants will challenge the existing commercial data pricing strategies, moving EO

data sales opportunities from an end to a means for delivering commercial value-added downstream applications.

Small satellite trends are shifting away from one-time stints and moving toward more widespread adoption, enabled

by constellations. The challenge is that space assets are traditionally extremely valuable, extremely expensive, and

extremely risky. So the next technological frontier for quality imaging from space involves systems that can both

capture high quality (resolution) data to show economic activity and be cost-effective enough to deploy in large

numbers (timeliness). Resolution and timeliness are the two critical elements required to realize the growth potential

of EO, reach a critical mass of adoption, and ultimately become self-sustaining.

Since most businesses are interested in economic activity of some kind, the most valuable data is that which can

monitor at the economic scale (≤ 1m) and temporal scale (daily). Existing EO systems have not met the needs of many

business applications because they lack the critical combination of timeliness and sub-meter resolution. High-profile

start-ups such as Planet Labs have taken a huge step forward in terms of improving temporal resolution, but still lack

the economic resolution to drive mainstream adoption. The following diagram shows the applications market demand

in the top right corner.

The top right blue part of this diagram illustrate the emerging EO market that would be leveraged by the

development of Nano/Micro-Satellite constellations.

The biggest customers of conventional commercial imaging satellites are governments, in particular intelligence

agencies and the military. These high cost, high capability products are priced far out of reach for many other potential

users, including researchers, in areas as diverse as farming, forest carbon management, regional and local planning,

and environmental stewardship. By bringing the cost down and accessibility up, new entrants in this marketplace hope

to spur a proliferation of innovative uses. Another innovative approach under discussion is to offer heavy discounts,

or even make imagery free, to academics and non-governmental organizations, in order to increase usage.

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Making EO data freely available in order to build services has been and will continue to deliver success. It is not

expected that all data will lead to the development of revenue-generating services; however, the wider dissemination

of EO data across applications, industries, and universities, etc., will increase adoption of EO as a new data set. In

addition to creating more cost-effective services (by reducing the cost of the data product), it is felt that exposing more

individuals and sectors to EO data will help increase the demand of paid-for commercial solutions if a higher-

resolution, high-accuracy product is required to support applications’ development. The quality of service attached to

the data is still recognized as carrying value: co-existence of free and paying data is therefore still possible, provided

that the paying data is delivered in a suitable approach.

Euroconsult estimates that the market for commercial EO data will reach £1.8 billion by 2020 (9% CAGR), with the

greatest amount of growth coming from non-defence markets. According to their latest industry report, this is driven

by demand to “support wider economic growth with applications spanning natural resources monitoring, engineering

and infrastructure, and defence.”9

The needs of the £1.8 billion market opportunity cannot be met entirely by future Nano/Micro-Satellite missions due

to the following technical considerations:

a. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR): £340 million is attributed to SAR images, which are not currently feasible

using a Nano/Micro-Satellite platform due to size and power constraints. While technology is improving, this

is not likely feasible for another 5-10 years.

b. Very High Resolution (VHR): £1.1 billion is attributed to VHR optical images (ground resolution less than 1

meter) which are currently difficult to acquire from Nano/Micro-Satellite platforms, although new

technologies are enabling greater capability. Additionally, £400 million of the VHR value is expected to come

from US Defence, who demands resolution that is likely out of reach of Nano/Micro-Satellite platforms.

Therefore, the VHR market captured by Nano/Micro-Satellite platforms in 2020 is expected to be £530 million,

or 50% of the total.

c. High-Medium Resolution (H-MR): H-MR optical images (>1 meter ground resolution), an estimated £440

million market value in 2020, is fully within the reach of Nano/Micro-Satellite mission capabilities.

Therefore, the size of the commercial EO data market reachable by Nano/Micro-Satellites platforms is estimated to

reach £970 million by 2020, or 54% of the total £1.8 billion market.

3) Downstream Applications – Increasing the Profitability of Business

A strong upstream sector will enable the growth of the downstream sector. Indeed, the downstream sector will experience significant disruption with the arrival of Nano/Micro-Satellite constellations. For reference, the ratio of upstream turnover to downstream in other major space-faring nations such as Germany and France (incl. satellite

9 Euroconsult, Satellite-Based Earth Observation, Market Prospects to 2022

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manufacturing, launch services, and ground systems) is approximately 1:1210. With a ratio of 1:6 in the UK, it is important to realize the need to develop and enable a more robust upstream sector to facilitate the growth of the downstream sector.

The market analysis reports prepared by the UK Space Innovation and Growth Strategy have been trying to size them

up. Rather than estimating what portions would count for the EO vertical, the following examples have been identified

as emerging opportunities already addressed by Nano/Micro-Satellite missions’ precursors11:

Agriculture Health Monitoring: Monitor crop health and forecast crop yields with timely sub-meter imagery.

Identify pest infestation and plan irrigation levels to augment your precision agriculture techniques.

Humanitarian Aid: Monitor refugee movements and infrastructure development in conflict areas to aid

humanitarian efforts.

Insurance Modelling: Inform risk exposure models to increase efficiency and profitability. Frequently monitor

high value assets for change.

Oil Storage Monitoring: Monitor oil storage containers with sub-meter imagery for changes in volumes to

inform commodity trading decisions.

Natural Disaster Response: Aid first responders in rescue coordination. Monitor long-term recovery and relief

efforts.

Oil & Gas Infrastructure Monitoring: Explore potential sites or monitor existing property and infrastructure

for safety and security. Detect the intrusion of vehicles, new construction, or vegetation on pipeline corridors.

Financial Trading Intelligence: Access proprietary information to make more informed and competitive

investment decisions. Identify changes in relevant metrics like the number of cars in a retailer's parking lot or

size of stockpiles of natural resources in ports.

Mining Operations Monitoring: Explore new sites or monitor ongoing projects. Identify specific rock

topologies and geological structures associated with mineralized areas. Obtain up to date imagery for

evacuation planning.

Carbon Monitoring: Create reliable carbon stock baselines and improve land cover maps.

Maritime Monitoring: Monitor ships entering and exiting ports with HD video to inform supply chain

optimization decisions. Validate AIS data and analyse container activity in ports.

Retail12: Traffic gauging of parking lots to find out how many shoppers expected at every hour of every day.

The aforementioned markets can be segmented and addressed separately by industry; however, on a national

perspective, it is very important to enable them together due to their dependency within the overall end-to-end supply

chain to maximise the growth opportunities.

10 Value Added Services in the European Space Sector Euroconsult/ESA 2007 11 http://www.planet.com/flock1/ and http://www.skyboximaging.com/products/analytics 12 http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-26/lowes-most-powerful-sales-tool-satellites

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Nano/Micro-Satellites to Deliver 54% of Downstream Market Value in 2020

In order for the UK to capture the EO market, the following critical dependencies must be addressed:

1. Infrastructure and Expertise Access to develop Nano/Micro-Satellite Missions and Supply Chain

2. Launch and Operations (including regulation)

3. Payload Data Acquisition (downlink, repatriation, processing, archiving and dissemination)

4. Commercial Exploitation of EO data

1) Infrastructures and Expertise to develop Nano/Micro-Satellite Missions and Supply Chain

This section addresses the blockers that Nano/Micro-Satellite technology suppliers would encounter and how a

Mission Lab would support their enablement.

New Nano/Micro-Satellite technology concept will typically follow a programme of development that can be

characterised into 9 technology readiness levels, shown in figure below. These can be broadly divided into three

elements: Fundamental Research, Technology Demonstration and System Validation.

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Description of the nine technology readiness levels Nano/Micro-Satellite supply chain have often to achieve before

reaching a commercial exploitation13

It is the second stage, technology demonstration, often proves to be the most difficult. Considerable business risk and

financial investment is required to develop and characterise new technology solutions. This is a well-known challenge

not only in the space industry, but also more generally in the engineering discipline and is sometimes referred to

colloquially as the TRL “valley of death”. Indeed, the following quote was provided as evidence for such a problem by

Rolls Royce to the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee:

“The valley of death can be expressed in TRL terms. It normally reflects the difficulty of getting a new technology

through TRLs 4 to 7. In this area the investment required is high, but the certainty of success remains low.” (Science

and Technology Select Committee, Bridging the "valley of death": improving the commercialisation of research - written

evidence, (HC 1936, 2010-12))

Considering the impact of this statement on Nano/Micro-Satellite supply chain development, we have identified two

key challenges in the development of an idea from fundamental research industrialisation. At low TRL, technology

proof-of-concepts require investment and characterisation to demonstrate capability for industrialisation. Engineering

effort is required to take the low TRL proof of concept through to a complete, functional prototype representative of

a commercial product. In general, this can be considered as raising TRL from 3 through to 6 resulting in an integrated

demonstration of the product suitable for commercialisation. If a success, industrialisation will follow through the

development of the overall Nano/Micro-Satellite supply chain. However, such efforts must be performed by a business

or research organisation either at their own cost or by exploration of the time-consuming process of obtaining external

funding.

These particular blockers can be addressed by providing a network of facilities and services (so called Mission Labs

Concept) that will support technology development through all TRLs.

13 TRL as defined in the ESA Technology Readiness Levels Handbook for Space Applications

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Example of a CubeSat FlatSat used by technology suppliers to develop their technology into a Nano-

Satellite representative environment

The Missions Lab provides low TRL technology providers access to infrastructure, including flight-like satellite

hardware, emulators and simulators. The Missions Lab will enable the exploration of a technology’s integration into a

platform. Its purpose is to introduce technology providers to an environment where programmes of engineering

research can be undertaken to characterise and understand the requirements for integrating their technology into a

satellite platform. Low TRL proof-of-concepts of a component, system or breadboard would be expected at this stage

to demonstrate new functionality, miniaturisation efforts or potential solutions to the needs of new mission concepts.

The objective of such studies will be to de-risk design work at an early stage, reducing the potential for compatibility

issues with common platforms at an early stage. The result will be beneficial to Nano/Micro-Satellite technology

providers as it will reduce the probability of encountering engineering or limitations at an early stage of development.

This approach demonstrates how better access to relevant technology will reduce the time to market for a new

product. Moreover, it mitigates the requirement for an organisation with limited resources to develop ad-hoc

infrastructure at an early stage.

2) Launches, Operations and Regulation

The following section addresses two major blockers standing between the development and the exploitation of

Nano/Micro-Satellite missions.

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Blocker #1: Launch & Operations

The UK does not currently have launch capability. This however, can be easily mitigated by the use of launch brokers.

Through the Catapult, we have already developed a relationship with a leading launch broker and space logistics

company, Spaceflight Services. This will be part of the end-to-end solution provided for entrepreneurs through the

Catapult and its partner organizations.

Nano/Micro-Satellite missions are currently migrating from technology demonstration and academic research purpose

to a commercial exploitation for EO and Remote Sensing Purpose. A direct consequence of this “industrialisation”

transition is that Nano/Micro-Satellite operations cannot be supported any more by ad-hoc spacecraft systems relying

on amateur radio network only. In addition Nano/Micro-Satellite constellations operated from a distributed ground

station network require intelligent and automated system to maximise their low-cost exploitation.

This blocker can be addressed by the development of a national Nano/Micro-Satellite Mission Operations Centre. This

operations centre should be built on previous heritage and experience from ISIC era and Catapult’s early engagement

with Nano/Micro-Satellite actors such as SSTL, Clyde Space or Planet Labs.

To enable the low-costs operations of Nano/Micro-Satellite missions and constellations, the Operations Centre should

rely on sustaining and disruptive innovation using automated systems and standard interface. This Operation Centre,

integrated to other ground assets, is aiming at providing an end-to-end capability.

However, the Operations Centre should be understood as being a set of systems, solutions, skills, resources, processes

and policies. The concept has been defined by the Catapult in cooperation with Nano/Micro-Satellites pioneers.

Catapult is currently establishing memorandum of understanding with relevant organisations to support a long term

strategy for the development, operations, exploitation and marketing of UK capacities to enable Nano/Micro-Satellite

missions.

The figure below captures a sample of the different UK ground assets which can be used for the operations of

Nano/Micro-Satellites missions.

The Nano/Micro-Satellite Missions Operations Centre is interfaced to a Network of Distributed Ground Systems

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The Operations Centre is integrated with ground segment assets available in the UK, provided by institutional

organisations and industries. The information is divided in 6 categories, as shown in the figure above:

Mission Operations: operation capabilities, per type of mission concept (including protocols and interfaces)

Uplinks: Bands available for satellite commanding communication

Satellite Missions: Nano-Satellites or Micro-Satellites to be operated

Downlinks: Bands available for payload data reception

Processing and Archiving: Processing and archiving capabilities, including processing clusters and data centres

Networks: Links between ground assets

The Operations Centre’s Control Room Inaugurated by the Catapult Advisory Group

Blocker #2: Regulation

The following section describes the current regulatory laws blocking the Nano/Micro-Satellite missions business in UK

and some proposition to enable them.

The space sector offers significant economic opportunity, and importantly, satellites and commercial applications of

space have been identified as one the UK’s Eight Great Technologies14. The global space economy in 2012 was valued

at over £200Bn in commercial revenue and government budgets, and is expected to double by 203015. This growth is

expected to come from the commercial sector, driven primarily by entrepreneurs and new business models. With

historical average growth of 37% per year over the last four years, and estimated growth of 24% per year over the

next six years, the small satellite market is expected to be an important driver of growth in the overall space sector16.

Entrepreneurs developing small satellite businesses, and the downstream satellite applications which these drive, will

play a key role in achieving the UK’s economic growth ambitions and also that of adding 100,000 jobs. A robust

upstream satellite infrastructure is therefore critical for underpinning new applications and services.

The current regulatory environment, established in the UK and not amended since 1986, has not kept pace with

advancements in technology. Licensing requirements put UK businesses that launch satellites at a significant global

disadvantage when compared to other space players. This is having detrimental impact on existing companies, leaving

14 Eight Great Technologies David Willetts, Policy Exchange, 201315 Space Foundation’s 2013 Report. Spacefoundation.org. 02Apr13. Retrieved 11Sep13. 16 2014 Nano/Microsatellite Market Assessment, SpaceWorks. Jan 2014.

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new UK businesses and entrepreneurs little choice but to leave the country, and preventing the UK from attracting

foreign investment. If the UK is to realize its ambition in the space sector, it needs a regulatory environment that

encourages space business and puts the UK on a level playing field with other space faring nations.

Four key issues:

1. License fees. Each spacecraft is required to obtain a separate license from the UK Space Agency, the

application fee for which is currently £6500. The UKSA has stated that they are willing to consider licensing

constellations of identical satellites under the same license, but there is no standard process in place, leaving

the satellite supply chain with a great deal of uncertainty. This is a significant issue, especially when very small

satellites can cost as little as £99 including assembly, integration, verification, testing, launch and operation.

The issue is compounded for constellations comprising a number of satellites which are increasingly common.

Pocket Spacecraft develops low-cost, open source open access, mass space exploration systems that anyone

can use. Their payloads consist of thousands of thin-film spacecraft / lander / rovers, which are typically

smaller than a CD and thinner than a piece of paper and are carried on CubeSat. The current UK licensing costs

are clearly disproportionate to the £99 price tag for these tiny satellites.

2. Two years of audited financial statements is an impossible requirement to meet for new business start-ups.

This is a serious obstruction, which very effectively prevents new companies from obtaining a license and

starting new satellite businesses in the UK. The UKSA has stated that exceptions can be made with guarantees,

but this again lacks a consistent and predictable process for businesses. O3b Networks is a satellite-based

internet infrastructure provider with a market cap of $1.3 billion.17 They are a very large start-up, but without

three years of audited financial statements, even they faced significant hurdles in obtaining a license –

including paying the licensing fee several times.

3. Indemnity. The UK is the only country to require satellite operators to take out insurance for loss and damage

in the launch phase over and above that offered by the launch service provider. Most major launch providers

are willing and able to extend their launch coverage to their payload customers, allowing UK satellite providers

to avoid this costly insurance requirement. In-orbit insurance is where the real problem lies. With regard to

in-orbit issues and third-party liability, all other countries hosting the satellite operator take the indemnity

risk. According to the UN Outer Space Act 1986, every member nation is saddled with unlimited liability for all

in-orbit risk. Because in-orbit collision is highly unlikely when compared to the economic potential, all other

governments take this liability upon themselves. Thus, the UK is unique in its interpretation of the UN Outer

Space Act and the only country to extend that burden onto private industry, requiring satellite operators to

self-insure and indemnify the Government against in-orbit risk. The insurance premiums for both of these can

be a significant cost and catastrophic for entrepreneurs looking to create new small satellite businesses in the

sector. This additional cost, which only falls on UK satellite operators, reduces their global competitiveness in

the space industry. Planet Labs operates the World’s largest fleet of 30 low-cost Earth imaging satellites, with

plans to launch 100 more this year. Utilizing the low-cost CubeSat standard, they are able to do this with just

$65M in funding. One of the Founders is a UK national and would have considered establishing their business

in the UK, but due the punitive regulatory environment, instead set up in Silicon Valley, California.

4. Lack of transparency and clear procedure. A license requires approval from both UK Space Agency and Ofcom.

This is different from the United States which only requires approval from the FCC (Ofcom equivalent), but

similar to France which requires approval by CNES in addition to communications approval. The existing

procedures in the UK are unclear and lack transparency as to the technical, financial, and legal assessments

required for the Management of Satellite Filings. Multiple assessments are required, with limited

coordination, and there are questions as to whom, timing, content, and confidentiality. In addition, new

hurdles often appear during the application process. The lack of certainty regarding the level of fees is seriously

prohibitive for start-ups/SMEs, but is also a problem for large established businesses, making it difficult for

17 O3b Networks. Crunchbase. Retrieved 03Oct13.

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companies to attract funding and growth capital. Surrey Satellites Technology Ltd. (SSTL) builds and operates

small satellites, and is majority owned by Airbus Defence and Space (formally EADS Astrium). Founded in 1985,

SSTL is an experienced company, however even they have difficulty navigating the complex UK regulatory

environment. On one specific occasion, the convoluted licensing regime caused SSTL a 3-6 month delay and

resulted in £40k in consulting fees to fill out the application forms.

Hypothetical case: The following table compares the launch and operation costs that a start-up/SME would incur,

depending on which space faring nation in which they were based. This case assumes a constellation of 25 (3U)

satellites, weighing 5 kg each, with an operating life of 10 years. The costs of operating a satellite business in the UK

are significantly higher than in other space faring nations. This is also likely a very conservative estimate of 3rd party

insurance costs, based on £75,000 per spacecraft taken from the BIS Impact Assessment of the Review of the “Outer

Space Act (1986)”, 18th January 2001. In practice however, we find that number to be optimistic and that insurers are

looking to charge 1% of the amount of risk, i.e. £500,000 per spacecraft.

Cost Comparison of Space-Faring Nations

Economic Potential

The market for small space payloads is at an exciting and complicated time in its development, with all signs pointing

to substantial growth over the coming years. Reduced launch costs and advances in technology are driving greater

access to space and bringing costs of launching and operating satellites within the reach of start-ups. These

entrepreneurs will be a key driver of growth in this sector taking advantage of the opportunity in small satellites and

downstream satellite applications. For small satellites these will typically comprise launching constellations and hence

the licensing regime needs to accommodate this. In order for the UK to reach its ambitions of 10% market share by

2030, creating 100,000 new UK jobs, a regulatory regime will be required that enables UK industry to exploit fully the

opportunities available to them and to compete on a level playing field in the global space industry whilst also allowing

better global access to the UK market. Measures will also improve certainty for the industry to operate, could help

competition in global markets by bringing legislation in line with other countries'.

3) Payload Data Acquisition

This sections describes the rationales for the UK to establish a global network of ground tracking stations for low earth

orbiting (LEO) satellites.

As an integral part of the UK Space Strategy, such a network would lead to a number of high growth space sector

opportunities and would give UK industry a distinct commercial lead in this rapidly emerging market.

The rapidly growing Nano/Micro-Satellite related markets are in need of ground station facilities to provide not only

command and control services, but to get real time access to the data. Indeed, a consistent and resilient world-wide

coverage of ground station facilities would allow the UK to maximise the exploitation of the frequent revisit of

Nano/Micro-Satellite missions in constellations, enabling real time data exploitation from the data downlink to the

dissemination.

(£millions) USA Russia France China UK

License Application Fee -£ -£ -£ -£ 0.16£

Launch Cost to LEO 5.08£ 5.08£ 5.08£ 5.08£ 5.08£

Launch Insurance Cost -£ -£ -£ -£ 3.38£

Third-party Insurance Cost -£ -£ -£ -£ 18.75£

Total Cost 5.08£ 5.08£ 5.08£ 5.08£ 27.37£

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Unlike the mature geostationary satellite market, LEO satellites orbit the earth quickly (every 90 minutes) and their

trajectory takes them over different territory on each pass. In order to maximise the opportunities to communicate

with these satellites it makes sense to have a geographically diverse network of ground facilities. However, the barriers

to entry into this market are characterised by the capital investment needed for the initial set-up, the procurement of

suitable international locations, the availability of data connectivity from the remote location back to the satellite

operator’s headquarters, and the technical skills required to create a remotely operated system.

Until very recently, a commercial market for providing tracking and operating services for LEO satellites has not

existed. However, the recent establishment of tracking facilities at Goonhilly for the highly acclaimed Planet Labs

satellite constellation is demonstrating that there is a business case for providing commercial ground facilities.

However, the growth benefits go far beyond the creation of a sustainable ground station tracking business. The data

collected from these satellites will begin to form a highly important resource which will gain in value over time. There

will be opportunities for specialist companies to process and analyse the data, thus adding greatly to its initial value.

Undersea Cables interface to the Goonhilly Earth Station’s Teleport

To enable Nano/Micro-Satellite missions and constellations development in the UK, it is proposed to develop a

worldwide ground station network, including antennas and connectivity. For this establishment, the UK would benefit

from a unique asset which is the Goonhilly teleport, offering interfaces from undersea cables to many different

latitudes on the earth, but also to existing infrastructure in the UK such as the Catapult’s Operations Centre and its

ground stations located at Harwell and Chilbolton (owned by the STFC).

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The proposed system would consist of the following elements:

1. Nano/Micro-Satellite Missions Customers (at their home base)

2. Catapult Mission Operations Centre

3. Goonhilly Teleport

4. Remote antenna locations (x20)

The ground station network should allow a remote antenna to be mainly autonomous, requiring little or no user

intervention.

The remote antenna system will comprise:

5m X/S-Band tracking antenna mounted inside a 7.5m radome

UHF YAGI and/or HELIX antennas (16dBi) on motorised mount

Control computer cabinet

VSAT data communications terminal

Mains power supply

Local data connection (if available)

Air conditioning as required

Software controlled MODULATOR (Vector signal generator)

Software controlled DEMODULATOR (Vector signal analyser / spectrum analyser)

Transmit and receive amplifiers and block frequency converters

Each of the remote antennas will need to be hosted at a secure location with good horizon to horizon coverage. The

antenna will need power and, if possible, a fast internet connection (although, commercial satellite transponders could

be part of the exploit solution).

A remote operations solution will be developed to allow clients to access the system independently through operators

at the Catapult Operations Centre. The system will be accessible via a secure web interface allowing established clients

to make bookings for use of the system directly.

The Catapult’s Operations Centre will include aspects of the management and oversight of the global network,

interaction with clients handling booking and operational issues, and developing new applications. The Mission

Operations Centre will also offer data centre services enabling a body of data to be stored and made available to

customers. This could be done in conjunction with customers such that revenues earned from the use of client data

can be passed back to them making their use of this network more cost-effective and drive greater adoption.

4) Commercial Exploitation

EO-enabled applications are just beginning to emerge, promising richer and deeper interaction by accounting for

environmental context. However, they are difficult to build due to the distributed nature of the data (non-standard)

and the use of unconventional sensors (unfamiliar inputs). The toolkit and widget library concepts have been

tremendously successful with regards to graphical user interfaces (GUIs), allowing programmers to leverage existing

building blocks to build interactive applications much more easily. To leverage this, the Catapult will introduce

platforms to mediate between the environment and the application in the same way graphical widgets mediate

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between the user and the application. The Catapult is illustrating the platform concept with the genesis of an

application library, developed for maritime and future cities programmes.

The above usage scenarios highlight the following difficulties, which are common to most applications that use EO and

Remote Sensing data. These difficulties stem from the very nature of the information:

1) It is acquired from unconventional sensors (unfamiliar inputs). Mobile devices for instance may acquire

location information from outdoor GPS receivers or indoor positioning systems. Tracking the location of

people or detecting their presence may require “Active Badge” devices, floor-embedded presence sensors or

video image processing.

2) It must be abstracted to make sense for the application. EO data, for instance, provides geographical

coordinates, but tour guide applications would make better use of higher-level information such as street or

building names.

3) It may be acquired from multiple distributed and heterogeneous sources. Tracking the location of users in an

office requires information from multiple sensors throughout the office. Furthermore, remote sensing

technologies such as video image processing may introduce uncertainty: they usually provide a ranked list of

candidate results. Detecting the presence of assets on an image reliably may require combining the results of

several techniques such as image processing, data fusion, in-situ sensors, etc.

4) It is dynamic. Changes in the environment must be detected in real time and applications must adapt to

constant changes. EO information history is valuable, as shown by EO retrieval applications. A dynamic and

historical model allows applications to fully exploit the richness of EO information.

In response, the Satellite Application Catapult’s “Open Development Platform” will facilitate exploitation of the

services generated by Nano/Micro-Satellite missions for EO and Remote Sensing purpose.

Specifically, satellite data comes in all formats and sizes, and downstream application developers might not have the

knowledge necessary to understand the format of the data and the implications of the specific instruments used for

acquiring the data.

The Open Development Platform therefore would utilise the Catapult’s Earth Observation expertise on the EO data

format and software development experiences in data exchange, integration, aggregation and visualisation to abstract

most of the space domain specific knowledge from applications developers.

In additional to opening research data access, Satellite Application Catapult has a focus on engaging end users and

downstream technology suppliers via workshops. The engagement could then result in a consortium forming to

address specific non-space sector use cases, by prototyping demonstration systems that uses satellite services with

end users and suppliers.

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Screenshot of the FIAP Applications which can Exploit AIS Data Generated from Nano/Micro-Satellite Constellation

For example, the Applications and Solutions department has been engaged with developing a tool to prevent illegal,

unregulated and unreported fishing - a concept demonstrator: Fisheries Information and Analytics Platform (FIAP).

The FIAP platform make use of satellite data sources like AIS and EO data to derive information about the vessel

behaviours. FIAP is a step towards helping the fisheries analysts to prosecute cases against, and in the longer term, to

monitor and prevent, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

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