TopSat

TopSat
	The TopSat being made
Mission type	Optical imaging
COSPAR ID	2005-043B
SATCAT no.	28891
Spacecraft properties
Manufacturer	SSTL
Start of mission
Launch date	27 October 2005, 06:52:26 UTC
Rocket	Kosmos-3M
Launch site	Plesetsk 132/1
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric
Regime	Sun-synchronous
Perigee altitude	682 kilometres (424 mi)
Apogee altitude	707 kilometres (439 mi)
Inclination	98.18 degrees
Period	98.65 minutes
Epoch	3 November 2005

TopSat (Tactical Operational Satellite, also known as TopSat 1 and TacSat 0) is a British Earth observation satellite, currently in Low Earth Orbit. The nanosatellite was launched in October 2005 alongside the Beijing-1 Disaster Monitoring Constellation satellite by a Cosmos rocket from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.^[3]

Mission

TopSat carries out imaging with a ground resolution of 2.5 m. Much smaller and cheaper than other imaging satellites of similar high resolution, TopSat has been used to demonstrate the feasibility of providing images on demand to portable ground stations, such as that which might be deployed by the military or another disaster relief organisation.

TopSat was built in the United Kingdom by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, QinetiQ and The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory under the British National Space Centre Mosaic programme. The engineering model of TopSat now lives in the space gallery of London's Science Museum.^[4]

TopSat won the 2006 Popular Science "Best of What's New" Grand Award in the Aviation and Space category.^[5]

References

^ "CelesTrak SATCAT: 2005-043".
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e McDowell, Jonathan. "Satellite Catalog". Jonathan's Space Page. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
^ "TopSat". UK Space Agency. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
^ Space.co.uk Transcript: Stuart Eves interviewed at the 2008 UK Space Conference Archived 2008-12-09 at the Wayback Machine
^ Popular Science "Best of What's New" Grand Award, Science and Technology to TopSat.

External links

New era of low-cost Earth observation dawns as first images received from TopSat, QinetiQ press release, 19 December 2005.
"Topsat project". UK Research and Innovation. Retrieved 10 February 2023.

This article about one or more spacecraft of the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[1] "CelesTrak SATCAT: 2005-043".

[satcat-2] McDowell, Jonathan. "Satellite Catalog". Jonathan's Space Page. Retrieved 3 May 2018.

[3] "TopSat". UK Space Agency. Retrieved 25 June 2012.

[4] Space.co.uk Transcript: Stuart Eves interviewed at the 2008 UK Space Conference Archived 2008-12-09 at the Wayback Machine

[5] Popular Science "Best of What's New" Grand Award, Science and Technology to TopSat.

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v t e ← 2004 Orbital launches in 2005 2006 →
January	Deep Impact Kosmos 2414, Universitetsky-Tatyana
February	AMC-12 USA-181 XTAR-EUR, Maqsat-B2 (Sloshsat-FLEVO) Himawari 6 Progress M-52 (TNS-0)
March	XM-3 Inmarsat-4 F1 Ekspress AM-2
April	USA-165 Apstar 6 Soyuz TMA-6 DART Spaceway 1 USA-182
May	Cartosat-1, HAMSAT NOAA-18 DirecTV-8 Foton-M No.2
June	Progress-M 53 Molniya-3K No.12 Cosmos 1 Intelsat Americas 8 Ekspress AM-3
July	Shijian 7 Suzaku STS-114 (Raffaello MPLM)
August	FSW-4 2 Thaicom 4 MRO Kirari, Reimei Monitor-E FSW-3 3
September	Kosmos 2415 Progress-M 54 (RadioSkaf) Anik F1R USA-183 USA-185
October	Soyuz TMA-7 CryoSat Shenzhou 6 Syracuse 3A, Galaxy 15 USA-186 Beijing-1, TopSat, Sina-1, SSETI Express (CubeSat Xi-V, UWE-1, nCUBE-2), Mozhaets-5, Rubin-5
November	Inmarsat-4 F2 Venus Express Spaceway-2, Telkom-2
December	Progress-M 55 Gonets-M No.1, Kosmos 2416 Meteosat 9, INSAT-4A Kosmos 2417, Kosmos 2418, Kosmos 2419 GIOVE-A AMC-23
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).