News

Company Builds Satellites with iPod Parts

Friday, December 30th, 2005 at 12:55 PM - by Staff

Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL) has found a way to built its satellites faster and cheaper than the competition: It uses off the shelf consumer products, including Apple's iPod. According to the Business Telegraph, SSTL has launched 26 satellites successfully, and its small size helped it to leap frog slower competitors like Alcatel, EADS, and Thales.

SSTL found that it could design a produce a satellite in 30 months by using off the shelf parts. The consumer technology market is investing far more in developing new technologies, which can save SSTL as much as 15 years in development and testing.

Sir Marten Sweeting, SSTL's CEO, stated "We take these components out of iPods and so on, and work out whether we can fly them in our spacecraft."

On December 28, SSTL successfully launched its GIOVA-A satellite, the first in the European Galileo project to develop an alternative to the United State's GPS location system.

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