News | New Sub 1 Metre Camera (RALCAM 4) for Small Sat Missions

Orbital Optics Camera RALCam 4

New Sub 1 Metre Camera (RALCAM 4) for Small Sat Missions. Friday 20 October 2006

Orbital Optics Limited (OOL) has announced the construction of a new low cost space camera designed for small satellite missions. It will image the earth at 0.8 metre ground sampling distance (GSD) from 550km and be ready for 2007. Following on from the successful TopSat camera - delivering images at 2.8m GSD - built by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), OOL has licensed the technology to make a range of cameras commercially available to small satellite manufacturers and international customers.

The Chief Executive John Ellis said, “The objective of the company is to offer very high resolution cameras that will have a low mass and fit comfortably on a small 100kg spacecraft. The cost of the overall mission must be affordable to a much wider market than is currently the case with the large US spacecraft.”

The TopSat mission has proved what can be achieved for a total mission cost of around $24M and this has paved the way for the next step in imaging at sub 1 metre using a constellation of small satellites. OOL intends to have a product ready and proven for this next phase in the development of the imaging market.

RALCam 4, as the new camera is known, will be built this year and will have completed full testing by early 2007. OOL is a spin out from RAL with the exclusive world wide licence to sell a range of cameras including RALCam 1 the TopSat camera at 2.5m GSD at 600km.

Notes for Editors

Orbital Optics Limited is based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and became operational 1 st April 2006 : http://www.orbitaloptics.com/. It sells a range of cameras for imaging from space from sub 1 metre GSD to10 metre GSD. The objective is to provide low cost space proven instruments that will achieve the high resolution images that are currently more frequently associated with large imaging systems such as Ikonos and Spot.

The Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC) is one of eight UK research councils and is one of Europe 's largest multidisciplinary research organisations supporting scientists and engineers across the world. It operates world-class large scale research facilities, provides strategic advice to the government on their development and manages international research projects in support of a broad cross-section of the UK research community.