UoSAT-12
OperatorUniversity of Surrey
COSPAR ID1999-021A Edit this at Wikidata
SATCAT no.25693
Spacecraft properties
ManufacturerSSTL
Start of mission
Launch date21 April 1999, 05:00 (1999-04-21UTC05Z) UTC
RocketDnepr
Launch siteBaikonur 109/95
Orbital parameters
Reference systemGeocentric
RegimeSun-synchronous
 

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]

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

  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.
  3. ^ 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.


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