PARIS - The Canadian government has sharply
reduced the amount of time it takes to collect evidence of illegal fishing and
other infractions in its territorial waters by deploying high-cost aircraft
only after Canada's Radarsat 2 satellite has given an initial alert, according
to Col. Francois Malo of Canada's Department of National Defence.
Malo said
Canadian authorities plan to extend their operational maritime surveillance
capabilities with the next-generation
Radarsat system, called Radarsat Constellation, by adding an Automated
Identification System (AIS) terminal to each Radarsat Constellation satellite.
The
decision is in parallel with a program by Canada's Com Dev International of Cambridge, Ontario, which is using its own funds to
build several AIS-equipped small satellites after reporting a success of AIS
technology in a satellite Com Dev launched in April 2008.
Malo said using Canada's CP 140
maritime patrol aircraft to survey Canada's coastline — 243,770 kilometers
long, with 250 ports and a traffic volume of 1,700 ships per day — takes up to
180 hours of flight time to collect the necessary evidence.
The cost of
operating the aircraft is about 27,000 Canadian dollars
($22,330) per hour, Malo said here April 28
during a presentation to the Milspace 2009 conference, organized by SMi Group.
In a test program called Operation
Drift Net, Canadian authorities took 80 Radarsat 2 scenes to scan the broad
coastal area. High-resolution Radarsat 2 imagery was used once a suspicious
vessel was spotted to determine whether it was worth an overhead pass by the
aircraft. The result, he said, was the aircraft confirmed the activity just six
hours after takeoff.
"Deterring illegal fishing would
take a huge amount of aircraft time and we now use the satellite to find the
vessels in question before cueing the aircraft," Malo said.
Malo said Canada's defense forces
have begun their own ship-identification pilot program by using Radarsat data
combined with AIS signals produced by satellites launched in 2008 by Orbcomm
Inc. of Ft. Lee, N.J. Orbcomm is building a second generation of
machine-to-machine messaging spacecraft, all of which will include an AIS
terminal on board.
Malo said
Canadian authorities in March started integrating Orbcomm AIS data into marine
images taken by Radarsat as part of a program to monitor Atlantic tuna fishing.
The data is promising, he said, but suffers from the fact that the Orbcomm
information is not easily correlated with the Radarsat data because the two
data sets are coming from two satellites in different orbits.
For this
reason, he said, the Radarsat Constellation program, expected to feature
between three and six spacecraft, "will have an AIS capability. Our objective
is to have four looks at a given area per day of any area in our zone of
interest, with eight minutes of SAR [synthetic aperture radar instrument] per
orbit."
Malo said
Canadian officials have begun talks with Canada's allies, including the NATO
alliance, to determine whether other governments might take part in the
program.
In another
project aimed
at ship surveillance, Canada's defense forces have installed Radarsat 2
ground stations, one on the east and west coast of Canada, to collect data on
overall ship traffic. The program, called Polar Epsilon, cost 64.5 million
Canadian dollars and is designed to deliver information on a ship's position,
length, speed and heading within 15 minutes of being imaged.
Com Dev
officials say they expect to provide Canadian forces with the AIS technology
for Radarsat Constellation based on data from the Nanosatellite Tracking of
Shipstechnology demonstration satellite
placed into low Earth orbit in April 2008.
The 8-kilogram satellite was placed
into a 630-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit to determine whether Com Dev's
proprietary AIS technology works as designed. Under contract to the Canadian
Space Agency and Canada's defense forces, Com Dev is building a follow-on
Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite (M3MSat), to be launched in
2010.
The M3MSat
will also inaugurate a Com Dev-developed satellite platform the company hopes
will be used for multiple future Canadian government programs, Com Dev Chief
Executive John Keating told shareholders April 22. Com Dev is currently seeking
strategic partners to help finance the rollout of a commercial AIS system.
"We aren't
going to bet the farm," Keating said of the AIS and microsatellite development efforts.
"Appropriate backup plans are in place. We do not expect to generate any meaningful
revenue from AIS in 2009, but this next year will be crucial in determining the
success of the overall program."
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