The 2.28 euro million contract award is a valuable opportunity to progress the on-going Geostationary Minisatellite Platform (GMP) work at SSTL started under the British National Space Centre's (BNSC) MOSAIC programme. Work done under MOSAIC enabled SSTL to develop the recent ESA GIOVE-A satellite launched in December 2005. GIOVE-A is the first satellite of the European navigation constellation, Galileo, which will provide a European alternative to the US government owned and controlled Global Positioning System. At an orbital height of over 23,000 km GIOVE-A also constituted a successful first move "beyond LEO".

The Managing Director of SSTL, Dr Jeffrey Ward, offered the following response upon SSTL's notification of their success: "SSTL is very excited to receive some support from ESA for the development of an affordable geostationary platform. As we have seen from the GIOVE-A mission, SSTL's products do provide timely and effective solutions for demanding missions beyond Low Earth Orbit".

The Guildford-based company already has considerable in-orbit heritage with successful launches of 25 LEO satellites to date including TopSat, a high resolution Earth observation satellite for the UK government and the hugely successful international Disaster Monitoring Constellation; comprising satellites built by SSTL for the UK, Chinese, Algerian, Nigerian and Turkish governments.

The decision to support SSTL's GEO activities further was agreed, with the full support of the BNSC, at the ESA Industrial Policy Committee meeting of 29th November. The award will be made from the funds available in ESA's Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) 4 programme. ARTES 4 is one of a number of activities facilitating ESA/industry partnerships and encouraging innovative development in satellite telecommunications for commercial markets.

The Director of Telecommunications and Navigation at the BNSC, Ian Munro, noted: "The BNSC is supporting this activity because we are convinced that SSTL will develop a commercially attractive low-cost rapid-response communication satellite. SSTL is already commercially successful in the Earth observation sector and this contract will provide the key technological advances to migrate their platform design into the telecommunication sector. ESA'S technical support to the project is a key ingredient as it allows SSTL to benefit from ESA's comprehensive experience in "beyond LEO" missions."

The new contract will facilitate significant development of SSTL's transfer variant of the GEO minisatellite, the GMP-T, which will provide a satellite compatible with launch to a highly elliptical transfer orbit prior to transferring to a near-circular Geostationary orbit, thus ensuring more flexibility in launch opportunities. Once on-station the satellite platform will be capable of supporting a 200kg, 2.5kW payload for up to a 10-year mission lifetime.

This latest success for SSTL closely follows the signing of contracts for an additional Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellite for Spanish company Deimos and a high capability LEO Earth observation satellite for Nigeria's National Space Research and Development Agency. Both contracts involve the provision of satellite platforms, imaging payloads, and ground segment facilities. The NIGERIASAT-2 contract also incorporates a training programme to help build Nigeria's indigenous space capability.

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