[OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM

[Matt Amos]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Cartinus <cartinus at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On Monday 18 May 2009 02:38:10 Matt Amos wrote:
>> > But you have to
>> > either store some non-trivial part of it on the satellite (that is not
>> > as easy as on earth where you can buy some server with RAID and plug
>> > it into wall) while the satellite does not have direct visibility of
>> > the earth contyrol center where it can relay stored images (and then
>> > you have some means to transmit large amount of the data while the
>> > satellite flies over the earth control center) or have multiple ground
>> > stations or bunch of another satellites that relay the continuously
>> > transmitted data.
>>
>> i have to assume that qinetiq have some way of solving this.
>
> That satellite is specifically designed to work with mobile ground stations
> that are somewhere "near" the area that gets photographed.

qinetiq have a ground station in the UK, so i presume they have
contact with the satellite while its over europe and parts of africa.

their docs seem to suggest that the mobile ground station is optional,
so they might either have a network of stations or some storage on the
satellite. they also say the download format is a CCSDS standard, so
it may be possible to get some help from universities around the world
who may have the appropriate equipment to receive the signal... maybe.

> The current satellite is just a proof of concept. They'll need 4 of them to
> get to once a day coverage for the whole world
>
> So they didn't really solve the problem, but avoided it.

sounds like pragmatic engineering ;-)

cheers,

matt