Sweden’s government is tapping two local manufacturers to develop a small satellite platform that could hit the competitive global market as early as 2015.
The Swedish National Space Board has commissioned space systems suppliers OHB Sweden and ÅAC…
Sweden’s government is tapping two local manufacturers to develop a small satellite platform that could hit the competitive global market as early as 2015.
The Swedish National Space Board has commissioned space systems suppliers OHB Sweden and ÅAC Microtec to continue studying a cost-effective satellite called InnoSat.
With a mass of around 40kg, the InnoSat microsatellite is being designed to be flexible enough to cater for a variety of missions at a competitive price. The funding boost will see the platform being refined for several Swedish scientific missions, although both manufacturers see potential to offer it to the wider market.
OHB Sweden CEO Gierth Olsson said: “This will once again give our Swedish scientists the chance for unique world-class research. For us it means that we retain and further develop the national capacity to build complete space systems.”
A spokesman for the group told SatelliteFinance that it hopes to begin marketing the product in 2015, while awaiting the space validation of a national scientific mission being pencilled in for a 2016 launch.
The InnoSat programme will leverage on two earlier studies that OHB Sweden has conducted, the second of which was carried out in partnership with ÅAC.
ÅAC will be responsible for the electrical architecture as well as its basic software and power. The two companies will jointly work on the application software, and OHB Sweden will take care of the rest.
OHB Sweden’s previous satellites include Odin, SMART-1 and Prisma.
Ulf Sundström, senior VP of sales and marketing at ÅAC, said: “There is a clear trend that the market is demanding smaller and cheaper satellites meeting higher performance requirements than was previously possible.
“The development of the small satellite market has really exploded in recent years driven by technological progress and also due to global budget restrictions forcing the paradigm shift. We therefore see a huge global potential of the new satellite platform and look forward to the cooperation with OHB Sweden.”
Financial details of the contract with the Swedish National Space Board, a central governmental agency under Sweden’s Ministry of Education and Research, were not disclosed.
