Surrey Satellite Technology Limited has been selected by Orbital Sciences Corporation to provide an SGR-10 GPS receiver for the Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) mission.
This is part of NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI), and will see the DART vehicle being launched and manoeuvred to approach an existing target satellite, converging to within about 5 metres using a new advanced video guidance sensor before manoeuvring away again.
Surrey's Space GPS Receiver (SGR) is a 24 channel C/A code multi-antenna receiver designed for positioning, timing and orbit determination of low Earth orbiting spacecraft.
The SGR is able to initialise itself in orbit within four minutes from a cold start, and determines position to an accuracy of 10 metres.
The SGR has been used on a number of satellites, including ESA's PROBA mission, and several of Surrey's own small satellites.
It has been selected for Surrey's Disaster Monitoring Constellation, and the first of these satellites, AlSAT-1, is scheduled for launch in autumn 2002.
