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BAE Systems Signs Agreement With Satellite Company

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 April 2006, 00:00 CDT

By Eileen Kennedy, The Telegraph, Nashua, N.H.

Apr. 4--NASHUA -- BAE Systems announced Monday that it is teaming up with a satellite company to bring more affordable, small-satellite technology to its United States customers.

BAE said it has signed an agreement to partner with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. to offer BAE customers a variety of small satellites, which are more affordable and have less risk associated with them.

The products and services offered could meet a number of U.S. needs in space control and situational awareness, communications, remote sensing or scientific missions, according to BAE. When something needs to be sent into orbit quickly and there are cost constraints to a project, the smaller satellites will provide a solution, according to BAE.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., or SSTL, designs, manufactures and operates high-performance, low-cost small satellites. The satellites can be developed rapidly to meet civil and military Earth observation, communications, navigation and space science applications.

"The partnership combines SSTL's small-satellite experience with BAE Systems' advanced space electronics and ground systems capabilities," said Leigh Coolidge, director of the BAE Systems Small Satellite Initiative, in a prepared statement. "Together, we will provide U.S. government customers with an end-to-end solution -- from concept of operations to on-orbit mission operations to information management."

The partnership provides focused capability at lower cost and with shorter time to launch compared to typical satellite programs. The partnership plans to make satellite ownership affordable for U.S. agencies that historically have found it too expensive. It also will offer satellite technology to established U.S. domestic space authorities, such as NASA.

"U.S. customers will be able to achieve more satellite missions within a fixed space budget, allowing each end user to own its own satellite and thus achieve priority access to data," said Phil Davies, SSTL senior account manager, in a prepared statement. "Constellations of small satellites will become financially possible due to the lower unit cost, bringing real benefits of higher temporal resolution and persistent monitoring -- a new area of space applications."

Over the past 25 years, SSTL has launched 26 small satellites into low and high Earth orbit for international customers. SSTL pioneered the use of commercial, off-the-shelf technologies in space.

These smaller satellites are less expensive because they use this off-the-shelf technology, which lacks development costs, and the satellites do not have built in multiple redundancies built in.

BAE Systems develops and produces a wide array of space electronics and integrated solutions, from single-board, radiation-hardened computers to complete instrument payloads.

BAE Systems is a defense and aerospace company, with more than 100,000 employees worldwide and over $28 billion in revenues in 2005.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Telegraph, Nashua, N.H.

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BAESY, BA,

Source: The Telegraph

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