BILSAT

The first Turkish Scientific Earth Observation satellite - BILSAT - was successfully launched on 27 September 2003. It was built in Surrey University -UK with a cooperation Turkish scientists (TUBITAK-BILTEN Research Institute). It was carried to its orbit by a Russian COSMOS 3M rocke, which also carried satellites of Nigeria, UK, Korea and Russia. BILSAT will be a part of disaster monitoring system with other Indian, Nigerian and UK 's similar type of satellites. General properties of BILSAT

The BILSAT satellite carries five Earth observation cameras. One is a panchromatic camera and the remaining four obtain images in the red, green, blue and near-infrared bands. The satellite has very accurate pointing and is capable of imaging the same area at different incidence angles, permitting the virtual construction of stereoscopic images.

In addition to these cameras, a new nine-channel multispectral camera that has been designed completely by BILTEN engineers is on the satellite as a research and development payload.

Furthermore, for the processing and compression of the collected multispectral images, a real-time image-processing card that uses the JPEG 2000 multispectral compression algorithm is on the satellite as a research and development payload. The card has also been designed by BILTEN engineers. In addition, BILTEN engineers are working on an X-band transmitter that will be capable of downloading data at a rate of 100 Mbytes/second as a research project. The ground station will also be upgraded in order to receive the X-band data at this rate.

A satellite control ground station for the command and control of BILSAT is operating at BILTEN premises in Ankara. The ground station is capable of receiving satellite signals in S-band and UHF bands while transmitting telecommand signals in S-band and VHF band.

BILTEN will be a partner of Disaster Monitoring Constellation by means of BILSAT, together with Algeria, China, Nigeria, Thailand and the United Kingdom. In this way, BILSAT products may be used in Disaster Monitoring Constellation studies carried out in the framework of UNISPACE III.