Guildford - August 4, 1999 - Surrey Satellite Technology has delivered an SGR-20 Space GPS Receiver to Belgian company Verhaert for ESA's Project for On Board Autonomy small satellite mission - PROBA. PROBA is ESA's first small satellite for technology demonstration and is scheduled for launch in July 2000 on India's PSLV.Primarily the SGR will be used for positioning and timing on board PROBA as well as providing an experimental attitude determination capability. The 4 antenna, 24 L1 channel SGR-20 makes use of state-of-the-art commercial GPS chipset technology, designed to be tolerant to radiation effects.
SSTL has recently demonstrated the successful operation of the SGR onboard its own UoSAT-12 minisatellite launched in April this year, as well as onboard TMSat, a microsatellite built for Thailand and launched last year. The SGR achieved rapid cold and initialised starts and the tracking of up to 12 GPS satellites simultaneously.
The SGR was most recently used to verify an orbital manoeuvre performed using UoSAT-12's cold gas propulsion system and in the near future will be used in an autonomous orbit maintenance experiment on the spacecraft.
SSTL, a University of Surrey company, employs 104 staff and is located at the purpose-built Surrey Space Centre which houses the company's satellite construction facilities.
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