Satellites on the Cheap: The Wave of the Future

Satellites have been a key part of the communications, geolocation and military infrastructure of various nations the world over for years.

But in the past, the prohibitive cost of the satellites themselves as well as related costs like maintenance has kept satellites and services requiring them from being more popular and being more widely used than they might be.

In recent years, however, this has been changing, and a slew of new products have been revolutionizing the industry—powerful satellite systems that are smaller, lighter, and cost far less than traditional systems.

One upcoming system is to be the fruit of a new program being undertaken by the Japanese government in collaboration with several companies including technology firm NEC. As reported by the AFP, the country and its partners are looking to develop a new low-cost surveillance satellite and offer it to emerging countries beginning in 2012, in order to boost these countries’ ability to communicate, aid disaster relief during times of floods, assist in tasks such as mapping or forest conservation, and so on.

The upcoming Japanese satellite system is said to cost 10 billion yen or 120 million dollars—only a fifth of the cost of existing systems deployed by groups from the United States and Europe—of which the satellite itself is to cost only 5 billion yen.

According to the AFP, the Trade Ministry of Japan is aiming to offer this new satellite system to emerging nations from Asia and further afield. Further, it was also reported that Japan was looking to provide the satellite to Vietnam as part of official development aid.

However, this Japanese group is not the only one with an eye to assisting developing countries. The European consortium EADS Astrium, Europe’s largest space firm, has been offering low-cost satellites to emerging economies.

EADS Astrium has a proven history of offering low-cost satellite products and services. One, an offering of the UK firm Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) (now owned by EADS Astrium), is the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC), an inexpensive satellite system incorporating optical sensors and which is capable of providing global imaging on a daily basis. The DMC saw action after the Asian Tsunami and in the relief work in Darfur.

Another such product, also an SSTL offering, is a satellite design that is geared to map the surface of the earth at exceedingly high resolution—approximately 60cm/pixel. SSTL is known for producing low-cost space systems, and as reported by BBC News last January 2009, this satellite, known as ART (Accuracy, Reach, Timeless), incorporates components utilized in other industries, such as the automobile and computer industry, in order to help drive costs down. The company says that the ART can be built and launched for only $70 million, a far cry from the $500 million or so that regular spacecraft cost.

Recently, EADS Astrium has also announced that it has created a partnership with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), another low-cost satellite maker, to provide European institutional customers like space agencies with exceedingly low-cost dedicated satellite launch services using the proven Falcon 1 rocket system. Such a service, which will take place through 2015, can permit clients seeking to launch very small payloads to launch them independently to low-Earth orbit at the industry’s lowest cost per flight.