The Disaster Monitoring Constellation for International Imaging (DMCii) or just Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) consists of a number of

remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring information about Ear ...

satellites constructed by

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, or SSTL, is a company involved in the manufacture and operation of small satellites. A spin-off company of the University of Surrey, it is presently wholly owned by Airbus Defence and Space. The company began ou ...

(SSTL) and operated for the Algerian, Nigerian, Turkish, British and Chinese governments by

DMC International Imaging DMC International Imaging (DMCii) is the company that manages the Disaster Monitoring Constellation for the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters. It also sells satellite imaging services under contract and manages the operations of ...

. The DMC provides emergency Earth imaging for

disaster relief Emergency management or disaster management is the managerial function charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. Emergency management, despite its name, does not actual ...

under the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters, which the DMC formally joined in November 2005. Other DMC Earth imagery is used for a variety of civil applications by a variety of governments. Spare available imaging capacity is sold under contract. The DMC provides far larger areas of imagery than, but at comparable resolution to, established government imaging satellites such as

Landsat The Landsat program is the longest-running enterprise for acquisition of satellite imagery of Earth. It is a joint NASA / USGS program. On 23 July 1972, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched. This was eventually renamed to La ...

. DMC imagery was deliberately designed to be comparable to Landsat imagery, in order to leverage the expertise and software of the large established remote sensing community used to working with Landsat images. Imagery can be provided far more rapidly from the DMC than from Landsat, thanks to having multiple similar satellites in orbit ready to cross over a point of interest, and the larger images produced. This brings the responsiveness that is needed for emergencies and for disaster support, with images provided across the Internet from the responsive satellite and a member country's ground station within a day or less of a request being made. The DMC has monitored the effects and aftermath of the

Indian Ocean Tsunami An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Suma ...

(December 2004),

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cost ...

(August 2005), and many other floods, fires and disasters.

Satellites

The

sun-synchronous orbit A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is ...

s of these satellites are coordinated so that the satellites follow each other around an orbital plane, ascending north over the Equator at 10:15 am local time (and 10:30 am local time for Beijing-1). Some of these satellites also include other imaging payloads and experimental payloads: onboard hardware-based image compression (on BilSAT), a GPS reflectometry experiment and onboard Internet router (on the UK-DMC satellite). The DMC satellites are notable for communicating with their ground stations using the

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. ...

for payload data transfer and command and control, so extending the Internet into space, and allowing experiments with the Interplanetary Internet to be carried out. Many of the technologies used in the design of the DMC satellites, including Internet Protocol use, were tested in space beforehand on SSTL's earlier

UoSAT-12 satellite UoSAT-12 is a British satellite in Low Earth Orbit. It is the twelfth satellite in the University of Surrey series and was designed and built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL). It was launched into orbit in April 1999 on board a Dnepr r ...

.K. Hogie, ''et al.''
Using standard Internet Protocols and applications in space
Computer Networks, special issue on Interplanetary Internet, vol. 47 no. 5, pp. 603-650, April 2005. K. Hogie, ''et al.''
Putting more Internet nodes in space
, CSC World, Computer Sciences Corporation, pp. 21-23, April/June 2006.

First Generation

* AlSAT-1 (Algeria), launched November 2002, which completed its mission in August 2010. *

BILSAT-1 BILSAT-1 (formerly just ''BILSAT'') was an earth observation satellite designed and developed by TÜBİTAK Space Technologies Research Institute (TÜBİTAK UZAY) and produced in Turkey as part of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) projec ...

(Turkey), launched September 2003, which completed its mission in August 2006 due to failed battery cells. * NigeriaSAT-1 (Nigeria), launched September 2003, completed mission October 2012. * UK-DMC (United Kingdom), launched September 2003, completed mission November 2011.

Second Generation

* Beijing-1 (China), launched October 2005. Completed its mission in 2013. * UK-DMC 2 (United Kingdom), launched July 2009. *

Deimos-1 Deimos-1 is a Spanish Earth imaging satellite which is operated by Deimos Imaging who commercializes its imagery directly but also has distribution agreements with other entities like Astrium GEO and DMC International Imaging. History It was cons ...

(Spanish commercialDeimos and Surrey Satellite Technology Contract for Spanish Imaging Mission
, SSTL press release, 10 October 2006.), launched July 2009. * NigeriaSAT-2 and NigeriaSAT-X (NX) launched 2011.

References

External links

Surrey Satellite Technology LtdInternational Charter for Space and Major DisastersDMC International Imaging
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20060621040605/http://directory.eoportal.org/pres_DMCDisasterMonitoringConstellationAlSAT1BILSAT1NigeriaSat1UKDMCBeijing1.html Description of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation from the Earth Observation Portal]

Satellites

First Generation

Second Generation

References

External links

See also