SaRC aims to be a centre of excellence in satellite technology. Its first milestone satellite development, X-SAT, in collaboration with DSO National Laboratories has been a great success. The X-SAT is the First Singapore built satellite mission designed and wholly developed within NTU. It is a 106.68kg remote sensing micro-satellite using an electro-optical instrument with near real-time data downlink capability.

X-SAT has been successfully launched on board India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C16 at 10.12am Indian Standard Time (12.42pm, Singapore time) on 20 April 2011 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, India. High resolution earth images of 12m resolution have been transmitted back to the ground station since 5 May 2011. The X-SAT team receives the Defence Technology Prize on 28 October 2011. The developed satellite technology has been licensed to ST Electronics Pte Ltd to market the manufacturing and services for small satellite business.

SaRC new focus is on the nano-satellite (<50kg) technology and distributed space mission for remote sensing and communication applications.

At present, the centre has several research and education programs. The main focus is to pursue upstream academic research projects involving mainly in innovative nano-satellites for distributed space system application. The centre has an undergraduate satellite program. It involves second year to final year undergraduate students with the support of postgraduate students from different schools of college of engineering. The student team is now working on a 1kg pico-satellite, VELOX-P, scheduled to be launched in 2012. Another 5kg nano-satellite, VELOX-I, is also under development and scheduled to be launched in 2013.

Best Regards,
LOW Kay Soon