Simon Grocott
Head of Engineering
Space Flight Laboratory
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies
Canada

Biography
Simon Grocott is Head of Engineering at the Space Flight Laboratory, University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. At SFL, he is responsible for the delivery of satellite programs and Quality Assurance. As well, he is program manager for several of the current SFL satellite development programs. He earned his PhD in 1997 from MIT in the field of Control and Estimation focusing on the development of robust control systems for flexible structural systems. He began his engineering career at Spar Aerospace (now MDA) in Canada where he was responsible for control system development and systems engineering in the space station robotics SPDM (Dextre) program. He became the manager for Attitude Control Systems at Dynacon Inc in Toronto in 1999 where he first became involved with microsatellite development. He was responsible for the attitude control system for the MOST microsatellite. He spent 3½ years at Astrium Satellites in the Earth Observation and Science directorate in the UK where he was Head of System Engineering before returning to Canada in 2010 to join SFL.

Abstract
NEMO-HD – High Definition Video and Multispectral Earth Imaging on a Microsatellite Platform

Co-Authors: Freddy Pranajaya, Robert E. Zee

NEMO-HD is a highly modular 70-kilogram Earth observation spacecraft, offering unprecedented performance in amicrosatellite form factor. The spacecraft is presently in development by the Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) for the Slovenian Centre of Excellence for Space Sciences and Technologies (SPACE-SI). The primary instrument has a single 155 mm aperture with six channels comprising a high resolution panchromatic channel, a high-resolution HD channel, and four multi-spectral channels (420-520 nm, 535-607 nm, 634-686 nm, and 750-960 nm), resulting in multi-spectral pan-sharpened imaging with a Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) of 2.8 m and a swath width of 10 km. The spacecraft also offers a secondary wide-swath context sensor with GSD of a 40 m and a swath width of up to 150 km.

Real-time, full-HD (1080p) video at 25 frame per second is also offered at both resolutions. A 50 Mbps X-band downlink permits live streaming of the video to the ground station, allowing for responsive targeting and imaging. A sophisticated modular power system, with a peak throughput of 220 W tracks the globally-maximum power point, while avoiding effects from self-shadowing and temperature gradients. The spacecraft bus and payload is highly adaptable. Future missions can be built with different resolution and spectral channels, while the payload data acquisition and processing unit can be adapted to suit the needs of such a mission. The presentation will summarize the NEMO-HD operational concept, spacecraft design and current status.