[Satellite Today – 6-20-08] Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL)’s Earth observation satellite has passed its Test Readiness Review (TRR), the company said June 19. The DMC-2 satellite is scheduled for build completion in September 2008, and this new Earth observation satellite will provide higher performance imaging capabilities to the Disaster Monitoring Constellation, which is operated by SSTL’s subsidiary DMCii. 
    The UK-DMC-2 satellite will carry an enhanced version of the DMC (Disaster Monitoring Constellation) camera, which will provide 600km wide multi-spectral images of the Earth at a ground resolution of 22-metres. This is an advance on the current 32-metre DMC imager, which has been successfully providing imagery in support of deforestation, disaster relief and agricultural monitoring for over five years in the current constellation of five spacecraft.
    Paul Brooks, SSTL business development and sales director said, “This generation of SSTL DMC satellites will have ten times the capability of the first generation, at the same price only five years after the first generation was launched. This typifies SSTL’s continuous and rapid development of capability that has been so successfully used for environmental monitoring, communications and in the European Galileo navigation programme.”
    EADS Astrium recently entered into an agreement to purchase SSTL.