UoSAT-12
UoSAT-12 is a British satellite in Low Earth Orbit. It is the twelfth satellite in the University of Surrey series and was designed and built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL). It was launched into orbit in April 1999 on board a Dnepr rocket from Yasny Russia.[1]
| Operator | University of Surrey |
|---|---|
| COSPAR ID | 1999-021A |
| SATCAT no. | 25693 |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Manufacturer | SSTL |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | 21 April 1999, 05:00 UTC |
| Rocket | Dnepr |
| Launch site | Baikonur 109/95 |
| Orbital parameters | |
| Reference system | Geocentric |
| Regime | Sun-synchronous |
Mission
UoSAT-12 was an experimental mission used to demonstrate and test a number of new technologies. Imaging cameras and a high-speed 1 Mbit/s 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][3]
These now-proven technologies were later adopted by SSTL in the design of its Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellites.
References
- M. Fouquet and M. Sweeting, UoSAT-12 minisatellite for high performance Earth observation at low cost, proceedings of IAF '96.
- 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.
- K. Hogie, et al., Putting more Internet nodes in space Archived 2008-11-16 at the Wayback Machine, CSC World, Computer Sciences Corporation, pp. 21-23, April/June 2006.