News & Events

First image capture for SeaHawk

SeaHawk-1, the innovative ocean colour monitoring CubeSat, has captured and downlinked its first multi-spectral image from orbit. This satellite is a proof of concept of a system which has the potential to greatly increase the availability and resolution of scientifically important ocean colour data through a network of satellites that are much smaller and cheaper than those currently used for this purpose.

This excerpt from the first SeaHawk image data highlights the improved spatial resolution achieved by the instrument compared to the previous state-of-the art, a satellite with a mass of nearly 3 tons to SeaHawk’s mass of around 4 kg. Please see this article from the NASA OceanColor website for more information about this image.

Bright Ascension wrote Seahawk-1’s Flight Software and Mission Control Software so this milestone, demonstrating the end-to-end capability of the system, has been a real cause for celebration for us.

We’ve been involved in the mission from the early stages, helping to define the payload interface and concept of operations for the mission, and are providing ongoing technical assistance during the on-orbit operations. It’s gratifying to see the work of the whole SeaHawk team start to pay off and we are looking forward to support the move towards routine operation.