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Nanosatellite Tracking of Ships—Review of the First Year of Operations

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7th Responsive Space Conference
RS7-2009-6005

Nanosatellite Tracking of
Ships — Review of the
First Year of Operations
Franz Newland, Elliott Coleshill, Ian DSouza
and Jeff Cain
COM DEV Ltd.

7th Responsive Space Conference

April 27–30, 2009
Los Angeles, CA
 AIAA-RS7-2009-6005

Nanosatellite Tracking of Ships – Review of the first year of operations

Franz Newland, Elliott Coleshill, Ian DSouza, Jeff Cain
COM DEV Ltd.
155 Sheldon Drive, Cambridge, ON N1R 7H6, Canada; (519) 622 2300 x2851
franz.newland@comdev.ca

ABSTRACT
The COM DEV Nanosatellite Tracking of Ships (NTS) spacecraft was launched at the end of April 2008 following
an unprecedented 8-month kick-off to launch cycle. The mission has been operating successfully for almost one
year, exceeding its life requirement of one-month and goal of 6-months. The NTS is producing valuable results
from its Automated Identification System (AIS) payload which was designed to collect messages from maritime
vessels around the globe. This paper presents the NTS mission results to date, the extensions to the mission as a
consequence of its success and the impact of this responsive space activity on other upcoming missions. It is shown
how much can be achieved operationally, in very little time, with a limited but focused mission capability.

KEYWORDS: nanosatellite, AIS, responsive space, automatic identification system

INTRODUCTION completed within the first month of operation, the

minimum mission lifetime required. The spacecraft has
The Nanosatellite Tracking of Ships (NTS) spacecraft far exceeded this lifetime and payload operations have
was launched on April 28th, 2008 after an 8-month continued beyond even the mission goal of 6 months of
development from program kick-off to launch. NTS is a activity. The NTS mission has provided a much larger
6.5 kg nanosatellite that consists of a generic bus quantity of data and experience of collecting AIS
provided by the University of Toronto Institute for messages from space than foreseen.
Aerospace Studies / Space Flight Laboratory
(UTIAS/SFL) and a custom designed Automated
Identification System (AIS) receiver payload provided
by COM DEV Ltd. COM DEV is the mission prime
and also performs the role of principle investigator.
AIS is a ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore system that is
used as an aid for collision avoidance and vessel traffic
management. The AIS signals consist of short
messages broadcast by ships in two VHF channels (all
transmitters alternating between the two frequencies)
and include information about the ship, its course,
speed, crew and cargo. The NTS mission was
conceived by COM DEV in order to demonstrate the
ability to collect AIS messages from space using a new
technique developed by COM DEV. Being a terrestrial
system, AIS signals were not intended to be collected
from space which presents a number of unique
challenges. Further details on these issues, the rapid Figure 1. NTS satellite.
development of NTS, and the lessons learned from such
a program, have been presented previously in Cain et OPERATIONS OVERVIEW
al1.
NTS (Figure 1) provides simple bus operations with no
NTS was designed to provide risk-reduction for the new orbital determination or control. The bus has passive
COM DEV AIS technology through making use of a attitude control through the use of permanent magnets
rapid, but limited, mission capability. NTS completed and hysteresis rods which provides a damped alignment
its key commissioning activities within eight days of with the earth’s magnetic field. There is a limited
launch so that the first four payload cycles could be attitude determination means through the use of coarse
Newland 1 AIAA/7th Responsive Space® Conference 2009

Copyright © 2009 by COM DEV Ltd.

Published by AIAA 7th Responsive Space® Conference 2009 with permission.
sun sensors. The spacecraft design and orbit provide a
benign thermal environment such that no thermal
control is required. Spacecraft operations consequently
consist of power monitoring, payload operations, bus
and payload data and telemetry management and
communications management. Spacecraft orbit
knowledge is achieved through NORAD twoline
element (TLE) data and is sufficient for satellite
acquisition.
The NTS spacecraft has limited payload data storage
capacity so that when recording both AIS channels, the
payload is able to record approximately 90 seconds of
data before filling its on-board memory. The
spacecraft’s S-band downlink nominally operates at 32
kbps and operations were originally baselined to use a
single earth station located at the UTIAS/SFL facility
near Toronto, Canada. This offers up to six passes per
day, but is shared with two other missions. It can take
up to a week to download the 90 seconds of data
collected during a payload operating cycle, but the
mission objectives relating to technology risk reduction
do not have any data latency constraints, therefore such
latencies are acceptable.
NTS operations are currently shared between
UTIAS/SFL for spacecraft monitoring and control and
COM DEV for payload operations.
Initial data collection
It was baselined that NTS early operations and
commissioning activities would take approximately two
weeks to complete. This took into account that the
operations team from UTIAS/SFL would also be
performing commissioning and operations activities on
their own CanX-2 mission2 in parallel. In light of the
short minimum mission duration, and the low risk to the
spacecraft if there was a problem on orbit, the first full
payload activation and data downlink was accelerated
to eight days after launch. This first payload data

(a)

(b)

Figure 2: First AIS signal collected over an area with low ship density. (a) signal amplitude, showing a
number of AIS messages and (b) signal phase during one of the message transmissions, clearly showing the
AIS message with its characteristic synchronization start and stop markers

Newland 2 AIAA/7th Responsive Space® Conference 2009

acquisition was considered to be part of the
commissioning activities, but also provided very
valuable mission data in the process. The first payload
operation was performed over an area where there were
expected to be few ships, and away from major
landmasses, to maximize the chance of collecting low-
noise, non-overlapping AIS signals. The first signal
collected from NTS is shown in Figure 2, clearly
illustrating a clean AIS signal, as expected for the
particular area of collection.
After the initial acquisition, spacecraft and payload
commissioning activities proceeded in parallel with
data collection cycles, to maximize useful data
collected during the short targeted mission life. The
final bus commissioning activity, consisting of
approximate determination of the attitude stabilization
in line with the earth’s magnetic field lines using the
coarse sun sensors, was not completed until about two
months after launch. By this time, eight data collection
cycles had already been completed.
The first payload cycles on NTS were designed to
capture data from areas of low, modest and heavy ship
traffic, to demonstrate the COM DEV technology
performance in increasingly difficult signal
environments. The cycles were completed within the
first month of operation, and the results were in line
with simulated performance analyses prior to launch,
confirming the expected performance of the COM DEV
technology and providing a means to validate the “AIS
signal from space” simulator also developed by COM
DEV earlier during the technology concept
development phases.
Figure 3. Plot of AIS messages collected over first 6 months of NTS operations (Image
courtesy of AGI).
Newland
Routine data collection
Having completed the main risk-reduction activities
within the mission lifetime requirement of one month,
operations shifted to a routine data collection phase
with an aim of gathering AIS signals from every area of
the globe, to gain insight into the AIS signal
environment as observed from low earth orbit. Over the
first 6 months, a total of 33 payload cycles were
performed, covering the globe with 52 minutes of
cumulative payload operation (built up from the 33
“snapshots” over any location, of around 90 seconds).
In this time, over 42,000 individual AIS messages have
been collected from over 14,000 unique ships and base
stations, at an average rate of some 800 messages per
minute, and collecting over a fifth of the world’s
shipping population expected to carry AIS class A
transmitters. Some statistics for the messages collected
over the 90-second cycles in the first six months of
NTS operations, covering all parts of the globe, are
captured in Table 1. This demonstrates some of the
elements of the variability of ship density over different
parts of the world, illustrating one part of the expected
complexity of the AIS signal environment seen from
space.
Figure 3 provides an illustration of the AIS messages
recovered during the first six months of NTS
operations. The high density of ships in the coastal
regions can be seen clearly, as can the global shipping
lanes. The footprint of the NTS satellite is also
illustrated, showing the large area within the footprint
of the COM DEV AIS receiver at any instant of time.
3 AIAA/7th Responsive Space® Conference 2009
Table 1. Number of AIS messages collected during working with the first AIS datasets has also
each payload cycle during the first 6 months of significantly advanced the operational concepts relating
operation. to data handling and use as well as payload tasking.
This information is invaluable in space-based AIS
Number of messages collected detection, an activity that is still in its infancy (see also
AIS AIS Total Unique Cain and Meger3).
Channel Channel messages in ships
A B any data AIS MISSION ACTIVITY EXTENSION
collection Having completed a first global snapshot and
Max 1454 1444 2898 915 performed a number of analyses on AIS signal
characteristics, and with a bus showing continued
Min 0 8 13 13
stability and relatively minor degradation in on-board
Mean 612 663 1275 435 systems, NTS has more recently moved into a more
Figure 4 compares the number of messages collected operational role. During this phase of operation, data
from AIS channel A with AIS channel B for each of the has been collected for supporting collaborative
33 payload cycles (the x-axis is the payload cycle, experiments with sensor suites from other missions.
arbitrarily sorted by the cycle with the least to most Results from such collaborations remain proprietary,
messages collected on channel B). As can be seen, the but have exceeded expectations. The data turnaround
number of messages collected on both channels is has also been reduced from a week to a couple of days
approximately equal for almost all the collection cycles through some innovative techniques applied by
(those unequal primarily showing poorer performance UTIAS/SFL to improve packet sizing, re-requests and
from AIS channel A due to interference for example). link control.

The key bottleneck to routine operational use of NTS

remains to be the downlink despite the much faster data
turnaround now supported. To this end, COM DEV has
started a collaborative project with the University of
Aalborg, in Denmark, to build a second low-cost data
downlink site, dedicated to NTS. This second site has
had a very limited budget, and has been able to reuse
existing material at the University of Aalborg that had
previously supported Denmark’s first microsatellite,
Ørsted. The university design effort has been supported
both by research staff and students, giving an
educational benefit to the activity, while maintaining a
very clean programmatic interface, thus avoiding any
issues of sharing sensitive or proprietary data.

Figure 4. Comparison of the number of messages

received on AIS channel B vs. channel A.
During the first six months of NTS operations; COM
DEV was able to capture a number of key physical
characteristics relating to both the AIS environment
from space and the performance of the COM DEV
technology in this environment.

While the data shown provide insight into the high level
of mission success from NTS, only a very small part of
the analysis that has been performed on NTS data is
detailed here. Some of the knowledge has directly fed Figure 5. Aalborg ground station antennas.
into improving subsequent payload designs, and

Newland 4 AIAA/7th Responsive Space® Conference 2009

The Aalborg station is shown in Figure 5 (external) and
Figure 6 (internal), and consists of two uplink UHF
yagi antennas and the S-band downlink receive dish
attached to the existing mount used previously for
Ørsted. The radios and control hardware shown in
Figure 6 are able to be controlled remotely from COM
DEV’s premises in Cambridge, Canada. The design for
the station was heavily based on the UTIAS/SFL
station, detailed in Tuli et al4, and SFL provided some
support and components for the development of the
Aalborg station.
Figure 6. Aalborg ground station control hardware
and software.
The Aalborg ground station will shortly be brought
online, at which point NTS spacecraft operations will
transfer from UTIAS/SFL to COM DEV. With Aalborg
online, it is also expected to increase payload operation
cycles beyond the current rate. NTS is currently
preparing for operational collection of data on a routine
basis over certain areas of interest, and with the
addition of the Aalborg station, the number of areas to
be serviced on a regular basis will be able to grow. As
such, NTS operations have come a long way from the
one-month risk reduction mission first planned for prior
to launch.
Newland
BEYOND NTS
Whilst NTS has extended its mission into a phase
where it is expected to provide operationally useful
data, it was originally intended only as a first test-bed
for a larger and more capable series of AIS
microsatellites. Indeed, NTS was intended to validate
only part of the COM DEV AIS technology, with the
next generation mission expected to fly COM DEV’s
fully capable space-based AIS technology. Simulations
of the upgraded technology suggest the performance of
the full capability will be two to three times better than
NTS has already demonstrated.
The first AIS microsatellite mission awarded in Canada
is M3MSat (Maritime Monitoring and Messaging
Micro-satellite), a joint Canadian Space Agency /
Defence Research and Development Canada mission,
for which COM DEV is the mission prime developer
(see Figure 7). M3MSat will demonstrate the full AIS
capability, and also offers much greater operational
capability than NTS: the microsatellite bus clearly
offers significantly more power than the NTS
nanosatellite, so that the payload can operate at a much
higher duty cycle. The bus also supports a much faster
data downlink, such that M3MSat will be able to
provide daily collection of AIS messages for a number
of regions of the world. M3MSat is currently slated for
launch at the end of 2010.
Figure 7. Illustration of the upcoming M3MSat AIS
satellite.
Results and knowledge gained from NTS have allowed
M3MSat’s design to be enhanced to provide much
greater operational utility than originally foreseen, as
well as to benefit from lessons learned from NTS
operations and data analysis.
5 AIAA/7th Responsive Space® Conference 2009
 CONCLUSIONS
NTS was developed as a truly responsive mission,
completing design, build and launch activities in eight
months. NTS operations have shown similar
responsiveness, extending from a short-duration risk-
reduction activity through providing global coverage
and understanding of all aspects of AIS from space to
providing a powerful demonstration and technology
comparison platform with some operational utility. This
operational utility has been able to be extended through
innovative ways to increase data throughput and
development of new low-cost ground assets to support
the mission. As the team fondly states, NTS really is
“the little nanosatellite that could”5*.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the dedication
and effort of the many people on the COM DEV and
UTIAS/SFL teams and Aalborg University’s
Department of Electronic Systems, who have made the
NTS spacecraft and mission a success.

REFERENCES
1. Cain, J., Newland, F., Pranajaya, F. and Zee, R.
April 2008. “Rapid development of Proof-of-
Concept missions”, Proceedings of the 6th
Responsive Space Symposium, Los Angeles, CA.
2. Sarda, K., Eagleson, S., Caillibot, E., Grant, C.,
Kekez, D., Pranajaya, F. and Zee, R. "Canadian
Advanced Nanospace Experiment 2: Scientific
and Technological Innovation on a Three-
Kilogram Satellite," Acta Astronautica. Vol. 59,
2006, pp. 236-245.
3. Cain, J. and Meger, E. February 2009. “Space-
based AIS: contributing to global safety and
security”, Proceedings of the ISU 13th Annual
Symposium, Strasbourg, France.
4. Tuli, T., Orr, N. and Zee, R. October, 2006. "Low
Cost Ground Station Design for Nanosatellite
Missions," Proceedings of the 24th AMSAT-NA
Space Symposium, San Francisco, CA.
5. Piper, W., et al., “The little engine that could”,
Platt & Munk, New York, 1930

*
With thanks to the fictitious Watty Piper, Mary C.
Jacobs and all others tied to the original and only little
engine that could

Newland 6 AIAA/7th Responsive Space® Conference 2009

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