Surrey Satellite GPS receiver to navigate NASA OCO-3 mission

Colorado-based Surrey Satellite Technology US LLC has delivered an SGR-20 space GPS receiver to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to be integrated as part of the pointing control system for NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory—3 (OCO-3) mission.

OCO-3 will collect spaced-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and solar-induced fluorescence.

Once launched, OCO-3 will be installed and operated on the International Space Station (ISS) Japanese Experiment Module-Exposed Facility (JEM-EF).

Surrey’s SGR-20 is a single-frequency, multiple antenna GPS receiver designed as a spacecraft orbit determination subsystem for small satellite low-Earth orbit applications. The OCO-3 mission will use the Surrey SGR-20 for positioning information (to an accuracy of better than 20 meters) and velocity data (to an accuracy of better than 0.25 meters per second). The SGR-20 features four front ends with antennas, allowing more flexibility and redundancy for the selected mission.

According to Eugene Hockenberry, project manager at Surrey Satellite, “The SGR-20 receiver is part of a highly proven range of GPS receivers that Surrey Satellite offers. Our receivers are currently active on twenty-four Surrey satellites and have accumulated over 700 years of on-orbit experience. With this mission we will see another first for Surrey: this receiver will be our first space hardware onboard the ISS.”

Surrey Satellite delivered the receiver to JPL three months ahead of schedule. OCO-3 is scheduled to launch in 2018.