AN Edinburgh start-up has worked with space engineers to enable tiny, toaster-sized “nanosatellites” to collect crisp images of the Earth’s surface. Razorbill Instruments, a company developing products that control and measure ultraprecise movement on a nanoscale has collaborated with the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC), part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
Razorbill’s tech – a compact high precision sensor – aligns the mirrors on UK ATC’s high-res nanosatellite to within an error smaller than a hundredth of the width of a human hair, when they unfold in space.
Dr Alex Ward, managing director at Razorbill Instruments, said: “The earth observation data that is possible to collect from small satellites could be vital in understanding the damage being done to our rainforests, providing pin-pointed relief to disaster areas, as well as providing vital insights to agriculture and logistics sectors.”
The company’s products, which are designed and made in Scotland, are being used around the world from Canada to South-Korea.
The UK ATC had been designing the toaster-sized satellite that is much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than a conventional satellite. These miniature spacecraft cost less than the cost of a luxury car to launch but can do the job of a traditional satellite that might cost in the region of a hundred million pounds.
They have one particular limitation, however. Because they are so small, they do not collect as much light, and produce quite blurry images. A satellite where the mirrors were folded for launch and unfurled in space, like the petals of a flower, could collect much more light and help produce sharper images. It was with this aim that the UK ATC developed HighRes.
To make a focussed image, however, these fold-out mirrors would need to be aligned with precision three times the limit of human vision: after a violently bumpy rocket ride and automatically folding out in space, the mirrors would need to be aligned with an error smaller than a hundredth of the width of a human hair. At the time, the only commercially available sensors that could measure this level of alignment were too bulky and consumed too much power to be used on such a small satellite.
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