British Company Delivers Beijing-1 EO Satellite

British satellite manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has completed a landmark commercial satellite contract with BLMIT - marking the first attempt to commercialise the data services from Earth Observation (EO) satellites.

At a ceremony held in Beijing, the Beijing Landview Mapping Information Technology Co., Ltd (BLMIT) signed the formal in-orbit acceptance of the high resolution EO microsatellite (Beijing-1) system built in cooperation with BLMIT, marked the commencement of the satellite's operational commercial service for customers.

Professor Li Wei-jian, Project Manager commented, "This pioneering project it is the first time the Chinese government has provided operational Earth observation from space through a commercial contract and we are very pleased with the results."

The 166kg Beijing-1 is the most capable low cost Earth Observation (EO) satellite to date, carrying two payloads that provide high-resolution (4-metre) panchromatic images alongside medium-resolution (32-metre) multi-spectral images with an ultra-wide 600km imaging swath. Beijing-1 may join the internationally coordinated Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC), led by SSTL, which includes satellites from Algeria, Nigeria, Turkey and UK.
With 5 satellites working together, the DMC is able to gather images of a given location daily, thus mitigating cloud cover and monitoring dynamic or rapidly changing phenomena in a way single satellites cannot.

Beijing-1 will provide the Chinese government and commercial users with information on agriculture, water resources, environment and disaster monitoring throughout China. The satellite will be used extensively for monitoring urban development and pollution, especially in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and to generate digital maps of China using the high-resolution panchromatic imager.
The satellite is capable of continuously imaging Chinese territory even at the longest landmass track (3,000km) and transmit images to the groundstation in Beijing in real-time at high speed (40Mbps) with on-board programmable compression. Image data gathered outside the reach of the groundstation is stored on-board in a hard disc mass storage device for retrieval at night or later on demand.

BLMIT, a private company established to manage the commercial data distribution and services of Beijing-1, is undertaking a project to obtain cloud-free images to map the whole China within 6 months.

The Beijing-1 microsatellite, launched in October 2005 with a life expectancy of over five years, cost approximately GBP10M manufactured and delivered into a 686km low Earth orbit by SSTL.