Rescuing a satellite once it has been launched is very difficult. Because we can only obtain information about a satellite by telemetry from the satellite itself, we cannot obtain any more information once a satellite has failed. Furthermore, space debris reentering the atmosphere is becoming a significant problem because the number of satellites is increasing. Therefore, we are currently study...

Small satellites and autonomous vehicles have greatly evolved in the last few decades. Hundreds of small satellites have been launched with increasing functionalities, in the last few years. Likewise, numerous autonomous vehicles have been built, with decreasing costs and form-factor payloads. Here we focus on combining these two multifaceted assets in an incremental way. The first goal is to c...

The Chemical Release Observation (CRO) program developed three small satellites that were deployed from the Shuttle on flight STS-39. These were small experimental satellites built with a minimum of paperwork. while meeting all the necessary NASAISTS requirements. Each satellite contained a chemical (either hydrazine or an oxidizer) which was released on ground command. The satellites were appr...

This paper discusses the use of small satellites for future radar remote sensing applications. After a short introduction, we give first an overview of the TanDEM-X mission to be launched in autumn 2009. Here, special emphasis is put on the demonstration of innovative synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging techniques. Then, novel SAR configurations are introduced which make synergistic use of m...

In 2015, the plan for global coverage by the Chinese BeiDou Navigation Satellite System was launched. Five global BeiDou experimental satellites (BeiDou-3e) are in orbit for testing. To analyze the performances of precise orbit determination (POD) and precise point positioning (PPP) of onboard BeiDou satellites, about two months of data from 24 tracking stations were used. According to quality ...

In the next future new high-resolution (HR) multispectral, hyperspectral and radar satellite will be launched. In particular, from 2007 it is expected to be launched the first European satellite constellation with sub-meter resolution ORFEO (Optical and Radar Federated Earth Observation), composed of two French optical satellites (Pléiades HR) with 0.70 m resolution and four Italian Xband SAR s...

This paper describes the results from the recently launched SAR satellites for the purpose of subsidence monitoring over underground coal mine sites in the state of New South Wales, Australia, using differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR) technique. The quality of the mine subsidence monitoring results is mainly constrained by noise due to the spatial and temporal decorre...

SMALL satellites are enablingmultisatellite missions that were not otherwise possible because of their small size and modular nature [1].Multiple small satellites can be flown instead of amuch bigger and costlier conventional satellite for distributed sensing applications such as atmospheric sampling, distributed antennas [2], and synthetic apertures [3,4]. Missions with multiple small satellit...

The United States Air Force and Orbital Sciences Corporation (Orbital) completed development and demonstration of a new low cost space launch vehicle for launching small satellites using surplus Minuteman II rocket motors melded with commercial launch vehicle technology. The Orbital Suborbital Program Space Launch Vehicle (OSPSLV, aka OSP Minotaur) successfully achieved all mission objectives w...