SNAP-1 Spacecraft

SNAP-1 nanosatellite, weighing 6.3kg, had a number of firsts, including what we believe to be the first nanosat with propulsion.

SNAP-1 (Surrey Nanosatellite Applications Platform) was designed and built as a research mission by a joint academic-commercial team at the Surrey Space Centre and SSTL - funded entirely by SSTL.

The objective of SNAP-1 is to demonstrate in orbit the capabilities of advanced, highly integrated nanosatellites and their use as autonomous robots for observing orbiting space vehicles.

In addition to the machine vision payload, SNAP-1 carries a miniature propulsion system, the size of a pencil, using butane. This is currently being used to manoeuvre the nanosatellite to rendezvous with the Chinese Tsinghua 1 microsatellite.

Also on-board this tiny spacecraft are other miniature systems: a momentum wheel and magnetorquers for 3-axis attitude control; a GPS receiver for autonomous orbit determination; a 220 MHz 'StrongARM' 1100 on-board computer for housekeeping and high level vision functions; and an S-band communications system.

SNAP-1 imaging capabilities:

• Three wide-angle CMOS cameras, each with a 350 x 288 pixel detector, and each with a 90 degree field of view to cover an arc of 270 degrees.
• A single narrow-angle camera (350 x 288 pixels) co-aligned with the centre wide-angle camera providing the capability of finer feature inspection.  

SNAP-1 mission achievements:

• The first fully 3-axis attitude stablised nanosatellite.
• The first nanosatellite with on-board propulsion demonstrating orbit control.
• The first in-orbit images of another spacecraft from a nanosatellite.
• The first successful use of GPS on-board a nanosatellite - used for orbit manoeuvring.
• First use of propulsion on a nanosatellite and first use of butane as a space propellant.