UoSAT-12 satellite

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

UoSAT-12, the twelfth satellite in the University of Surrey series, was designed and built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL). It was launched to low Earth orbit on 21 April 1999. ^[1]

UoSAT-12 was an experimental mission used to demonstrate and test a number of new technologies. Imaging cameras and a high-speed 1Mbps S-band downlink (the MERLION experiment) were tested. An Internet Protocol stack was uploaded to the satellite, allowing experiments in extending the Internet to space to be made by NASA Goddard as part of its Operating Missions as Nodes on the Internet (OMNI) effort. ^[2]

These now-proven technologies were later adopted by SSTL in the design of its Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellites.

[edit] References

1. ^ M. Fouquet and M. Sweeting, UoSAT-12 minisatellite for high performance Earth observation at low cost, proceedings of IAF '96.
2. ^ K. Hogie, et al., Using standard Internet Protocols and applications in space, Computer Networks, special issue on Interplanetary Internet, vol. 47 no. 5, pp. 603-650, April 2005.