THe Fleet of British Radar Satellites

An ambitious project to put a fleet of British radar satellites into orbit around the Earth has been funded with money from the Chancellor's autumn statement.

The project is part of a £200 million boost for the scientific sector, and the government's funding will be matched by industry. The goal is to allow any location on Earth to be imaged within 24 hours. Radar is a particularly potent tool for this, as it can penetrate cloud cover.

The spacecraft that'll host the radars are called NovaSar-S, with "Sar" standing for "synthetic aperture radar". They weigh 400kg and measure three metres long by one metre wide, giving them a long, thin profile.

What's particularly impressive is the price tag -- by condensing the equipment into a much smaller body, the cost of each spacecraft is dramatically lowered -- down to about £45m, launched and insured. That's a fraction of what's charged for larger radar satellites.

The instruments on board could provide a wide range of functions, including flood monitoring, land cover management, disaster mapping, oil spill detection and ship tracking. It's hoped that it'll be particularly useful in monitoring deforestation in tropical areas, where persistent cloud cover often makes it difficult to get data.

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Martin Sweeting, the executive chairman of the company behind the satellite, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), told BBC News: "We're hoping we can use this commitment from the UK government to go out to our international customers, who we know have had an interest in radar for a long time, and get them to participate in the first mission, to start with, but then to take up one or two of the other satellites so that we can build a constellation in orbit."

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