UK Space command

A servicemember wears a UK Space Operations Center patch. (Ministry of Defence)

WASHINGTON: A Virgin Orbit launch this summer from Cornwall will mark the first time the National Reconnaissance Office has arranged to loft a payload from the United Kingdom — indeed, the first time any satellite has lifted off from UK soil, NRO and the British Ministry of Defence announced today.

Virgin’s LauncherOne, which takes off horizontally from a modified Boeing 747 called Cosmic Girl, will carry two experimental Cubesats for the British Ministry of Defense, collectively know as the Prometheus-2 mission. The shoebox-sized spacecraft “will provide a test platform for monitoring radio signals including GPS and sophisticated imaging, paving the way for a more collaborative and connected space communication system with our allies,” the MoD press release said.

Each Cubesat further will carry on-board equipment “to test novel concepts as a pathfinder in support of the Minerva constellation for future space-based intelligence and surveillance,” the MoD release added.

“This is a great example of the power of international collaboration — a key tenet of our Defence Space Strategy,” said UK MOD Director Space Air Vice-Marshal Harv Smyth an NRO release.

NRO’s “role in this partnership focuses on acquiring launch services for Prometheus-2,” an agency spokesperson told Breaking Defense, and for the first time used the NRO’s Streamlined Launch Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity Contract or SLIC to get Virgin on board.

NRO Director Chris Scolese called the planned launch a “historic enterprise,” and said it will serve “as the foundation for an even stronger collaboration between our nations.”

The agency release explained that the collaboration grows NRO’s launch site possibilities. “Launching from the UK marks a continued expansion of NRO’s overseas launch locations in addition to New Zealand providing NRO with the ability to launch from three continents,” it said.

NRO’s space launch director, Col. Chad Davis, told reporters in February that the spy-sat agency this year would be launching from a “third continent” for one of its seven planned missions this year. (The agency already uses small launch provider Rocket Lab to launch from New Zealand.) While NRO would not specify at the time, Breaking Defense was the first to report that the UK was the most likely launch site.

Neither NRO nor MoD has revealed the date of the planned launch.

Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl aircraft carrying the LauncherOne rocket

Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl aircraft carrying the LauncherOne rocket (Photo: Virgin Orbit)

Prometheus-2

The two Prometheus-2 Cubesats will be the first owned and operated by the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), according to MoD. The satellites, creatively named Cubesat-1 and Cubesat-2, were designed by Europe’s multinational space giant Airbus and built by UK startup In-Space Missions Ltd. They will operate in Low Earth Orbit at around 550 kilometers in altitude, with some 50-100km between them.

“The Prometheus-2 mission, with the first ever directly owned Dstl satellites, exemplifies the decades-long collaborative relationship with our international allies, and shows how we can best partner with industry. It will achieve critical R&D outcomes and help increase our pool of qualified space personnel to help grow the UK’s capability to deliver space systems in the future,” said Paul Hollinshead, Dstl’s chief executive, in the MoD release.

Cubesat 1 will carry a hyperspectral imager, a laser detector and a GPS receiver, the MoD release explains. “The hyperspectral imager will capture multiple slivers of pictures over different wavelengths of light for higher definition images. The GPS receiver confirms the precise time and position of the satellite over the area of the Earth to be photographed.”

Cubesat 2 will carry two electro-optical imaging cameras, a laser range finder, and a GPS receiver. “One camera will be fitted with a wide-angle lens for a 180-degree view of Earth’s surface with the second camera observing the other Cubesat 1 to support space situational awareness and enables us to understand what else orbits the Earth,” the release elaborated.

Carbonite-satellite-credit-SSTL

Carbonite+ satellite (Image: Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd.)

Minerva

MoD announced last month that it had awarded a three-year £22 million ($27 million) contract for the first satellite in the planned Minerva constellation to UK firm Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL).

Minerva is a £127 million ($156 million) science, technology and innovation program managed by the year-old UK Space Command, aimed at improving “MoD’s ability to collect and process data from UK and allied space assets,” the announcement explained.

Minerva is in turn being developed to underpin the the UK’s £986 million ($1.2 billion) ISTARI program, “which will deliver a multi-satellite constellation to support greater global surveillance and intelligence for military operations over the next 10 years.”

SSTL is developing the satellite under a Minerva subproject called Project TYCHE. “The key outcome of project TYCHE will be a robust understanding and analysis of the integration activities, test environments and interfaces required to establish and maintain UK MOD rights to freely operate a space based Intelligence Surveillance and Recognisance (ISR) capability,” SSTL explained in an April 4 press release.

It will be based on SSTL’s “Carbonite+” satellite. An earlier version of the Carbonite series, the 100 kilogram Carbonite-2 spacecraft, was built for the UK Royal Air Force and launched in 2018.