First LEO Satellite Built in Turkey: RASAT

BiLSAT* project was the first step to initiate and to improve satellite technologies in Turkey and it covered all major steps to establish the necessary infrastructure in Turkey to design, build and test a LEO satellite entirely in the country. As a second step, RASAT project has been initiated in year 2004. Except for some systems; like imaging system and solar panels, the technology of which are not yet available in Turkey; RASAT will totally be built and integrated at TUBITAK-UZAY facilities. The imaging system will have ground sampling distances of 7.5 m for panchromatic imaging, and 15 m for multispectral (red, green, blue) imaging which is an improvement compared to the imaging system of BiLSAT. What is so important about RASAT is that various new modules will also be flown for the first time on this satellite and will be tested in space for flight heritage. These modules will later form the core of future Turkish satellite, should they be successfully demonstrated in orbit. RASAT, similar to its predecessor BiLSAT, will be launched into a sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of about 700 km and an LTAN of 10:00AM or 10:30AM depending on the launch vehicle availability. The satellite will be commissioned and controlled from TUBITAK-UZAY ground station. Once the commissioning is over, the imagery data acquired from the satellite will be archieved and will be available to users. The experimental payloads will also be tested in space and thus TUBITAK-UZAY will spend a significant amount of operation time fory these experiments. The experience acquired from the RASAT project will later be used to develop further subsystems to fly in space in the future satellite projects.