UoSAT-12 Integrates with Dnepr for Launch on 21 April

14 April 1999
Surrey’s new experimental minisatellite, UoSAT-12, has been successfully integrated with the SS18/Dnepr launch vehicle by a joint SSTL and ISCK team at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and is due for launch at 0630 BST on Wednesday, 21 April.

This will be the first commercial launch onboard a demilitarised SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) converted into a Dnepr space launcher.

Working with launch provider, ISC Kosmotras, Surrey will launch UoSAT-12 on Dnepr, a converted SS-18, once the world’s most powerful ICBM. The missiles are being withdrawn from military service and converted for peaceful use as commercial launch vehicles under the auspices of the START treaty provisions which provides for the elimination of the SS-18 by the year 2007.

UoSAT-12 is the result of a £5.5 million research and development investment by Surrey in its commitment to offering advanced small satellite capabilities at low cost to future customers. The 350kg minisatellite will be launched into a 650km 65 degree low Earth orbit to demonstrate advanced high resolution multispectral and panchromatic Earth observation payloads, low Earth orbit microwave digital communications, plus a number of novel propulsion and attitude control technologies.

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, a wholly-owned University of Surrey company, has executed £45 million worth of small satellite business since its formation in 1985 and, just last week, announced the award of a million contract with DBSI in the United States to build the platforms for a constellation of six microsatellites.