The successful launch of the European Space Agency’s first Sentinel satellite was celebrated all over Europe last week, not least at the Harwell Science Campus on the outskirts of Oxford. The room hosting the champagne reception here is dominated by a large and intermittently functioning “video wall”, displaying replays of the satellite’s successful launch and deployment.
After the speeches and toasts, the talk in the crowd mingles highly technical details about geostationary orbits with chatter about smartphones. There is an almost even split between the number of casually-dressed people under 30 and grey-haired, besuited, industry types.
The split exists because European governments, like the British one hosting the celebration at Harwell, hope that marrying the highly technical with the entrepreneurial will create a substantial new global industry worth billions. An industry that is based on the data beamed down continuously from “Earth observation” satellites like Sentinel 1A. Data that was previously only available to governments.
Sentinel 1A is the first “Copernicus Programme” satellite. The ESA plans to launch 17 more Sentinel satellites over the next decade under the programme. The European Commission has funded Copernicus until 2020 with €8.4 billion. Recent research carried out by consultancy Pricewaterhousecoopers for the European Commission indicates that every Euro spent on Copernicus will return €10 to the European economy.
The Sentinel satellites will look down on Earth using a variety of different cameras and instruments. Sentinel 1A and its twin, to be launched next year, carry radar that can be used for a variety of applications, from mapping flooding and oil spills to detecting strain in the ground to improve the prediction of earthquakes. Later Sentinels will carry radiometers, spectrometers and equipment to monitor air quality.
Other potential applications include the detection and monitoring of oil spills, mapping during disasters, the monitoring of infrastructure, forestry, shipping, sea ice and wave monitoring.
Sentinel 1A, which is now orbiting the planet at 693 km above the earth, carries a 12m long antenna, and has two 10m long solar panels. The satellite was launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket.
Separating: the first Sentinel satellite was launched using a Soyuz rocket
Stephen Briggs, senior advisor of Earth Observation Programmes for the ESA, says once the rocket is past the densest part of the atmosphere the fairing opens and is shed. The different stages of the launch vehicle then drop off to leave the fregat and the satellite, which then separates and unfolds in orbit. “The solar panels unfold first because you don’t have much power on board, so you need to get them out quickly to recharge the batteries within a few orbits. Then you can take a more leisurely approach to unfolding the antenna,” he says.
“This launch was an enormous event. We are entering a completely new paradigm for how Europe is doing its Earth observation business. The rest of the world is green with envy. This is the beginning of a new era.”
Remote sensing from space has been considered since the late 1960s as a way of finding new resources and improving life on Earth. But its only recently that the technology has become both advanced and cheap enough to realise these benefits. Existing Earth observation satellites are limited in their application because they do not provide enough coverage or high enough resolution, do not revisit sites often enough. They also have restricted availability or simply have not had the sensing equipment fitted yet.
Martin Agnew, European Data Relay System (EDRS) service design authority and head of service creation for Airbus Defence and Space, echoes Briggs’ hyperbolic tone about the potential for Copernicus. “This will be a revolution that creates entire new industries,” he says.
“When I look at my house on Google Maps now there is a red car in the driveway. I haven’t owned a red car for more than 10 years. With the smartphone of the future you will be able to log on and see who is parked on your drive in real time.”
“The potential applications are as diverse as the human imagination.”
Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) supplied the radar on Sentinel 1A and is also providing the communications infrastructure that will return the data it collects. Improving the data link from space is a crucial step in commercially leveraging the data.
ADS plans to launch its first EDRS communications satellite at the end of this year. The satellite, the first of two, will sit in a higher orbit than Earth observation satellites like Sentinel 1A. The low earth orbit (Leo) Sentinel satellite transmits its data up to the relay satellite, which it then sends directly to ground stations in Europe. The system enables data to be provided on-demand in almost real time. Low Earth orbit satellites are often limited as to when and how much data they can transmit.
Agnew says: “The idea is to put the internet in space - we are creating the space data highway. It’s about getting the right data in the right place at the right time in the right quantities.”
The EDRS will provide a commercial service - its first user will be Sentinel 1A. But as well as increasing the availability of data from Earth observation satellites, it will also enable a reduction in their size and cost. Agnew says: “The vision of many in this industry is a mixture of many smaller satellites providing frequent revisits and queuing in the bigger satellites to do the detailed work. They are connected using a common infrastructure.”
Despite Copernicus’ cost, Agnew says that the trend across the space sector is for equipment and launches to get cheaper, which is opening up the commercial opportunities in space. This is typified with satellites in particular by start-up companies such as Skybox, a US firm that plans to build and send 24 fridge-sized satellites into orbit to commercially provide satellite imagery and video. Skybox’s first satellite sent back its first high definition video footage in December.
Copernicus sits alongside the EU’s other major space programme, satellite positioning system Galileo, the first satellites of which was confirmed as in orbit and operational by the ESA in February. Similarly to Copernicus, the €22bn Galileo programme is looking to maximise commercial benefits by enabling increases in speed of response, availability and accuracy. Sectors and companies all over world will be hoping to take advantage of Galileo’s features to offer new and improved services.
The marine sector is looking to benefit from both Copernicus and Galileo. The improved monitoring of shipping routes and the identification of vessels has clear advantages for security. Applications include stopping illegal immigration and drug trafficking. There are also civil applications such as improved search and rescue functions. Current search and rescue systems are based on transponders and an internationally-shared system of just eight satellites - called COPSAS SARSAT.
Taking up position: Europe's answer to GPS is the Galileo satellites
The number of satellites in Copsas Sarsat is set to grow to 73 by 2020, thanks to Galileo and other positioning satellite launches from China and Russia. This will enable better coverage, almost-instant reporting and the opportunity to feed back information to transmitters. These improvements feed down to technology SMEs like search and rescue beacon manufacturer McMurdo, which is expanding its business to take advantage of the developments. The firm supplies the beacon’s that trigger automatically on ships and aircraft when they sink or crash, as well as personal transponders. The firm employs 100 people at its UK manufacturing facility. Chief executive of McMurdo, Jeremy Harrison, says the firm is growing at a rate of 30-40% annually.
“Innovation is being enabled by the improvements to the satellite systems and the technology around them over the next five years,” says Harrison. “There is huge room for improvement and the sector is constantly evolving.”
An example of this innovation is a research project the company is conducting with Airbus following the Air France disaster in 2009 . The beacons are currently designed to switch on after a violent impact. The project aims to connect the beacon to the aircraft’s data bus, so that during a flight, when a warning is flagged up, such as an engine failure or an oil pressure drop, the beacon automatically starts broadcasting.
Martin Agnew from Airbus Defence and Space says: “It’s not just about the big companies like Airbus. I want to see the next Google or Amazon being generated and developed from Harwell. There are several companies here working on brand new ideas. Hopefully one of those will have a killer app for Earth Observation 2.0.”
Sentinel 1A is a first bold step - into commercialising the observation of Earth from space. The next steps are up to the creativity of engineers and entrepreneurs to devise new services and products. This isn’t big data, it’s planet-sized data.