Tuyuan Technologies “Surveyor” Satellite Constellation
A unique and entirely commercial “Surveyor” SAR satellite constellation comprising 5 low-cost medium C Band sensors has been placed under a global design competition by Tuyuan Technologies for launch in 2007. Tuyuan’s satellite crop streamer service represents the first focused satellite enterprise on global coverage for food crops and food security. Full Earth surface coverage by two of the five satellites will be achieved in less than 14 days and provides for the measurement of the effects of floods and other episodic events as they impact on global food crops. The five satellites that comprise the constellation has a continued in-built design redundancy on one satellite and will scan the Earth’s surface returning telemetry that will be processed automatically and streamed into Tuyuan’s financial, commodity’s’ industry and government clients in real-time mode.
The SAR on-board buses, configurations and sensors are all identical and focus on two resolutions of 10 meter and 25 meter with no high resolution mode. Swath widths are to be designed at 100 and 250 kilometers respectively thus bringing an extremely high cost benefit ratio in low risk terms.
Mr. Zhou Xintie, the Executive Chairman of Tuyuan explained “… that by taking the clone design approach coupled with an open design competition we are taking Earth Observation out of the hands of the academics and placing Tuyuan’s operations decidedly into the demanding terms and conditions of industry. This will ensure low cost, redundancy, assured telemetry and a very low risk niche focused operation. Still, we are also focused on our strategy of establishing our markets and our global network prior to the cash burn associated with the constellation design and build. Tuyuan has well over 100 collective years of EO experience in its management team and we definitely know what we want and need to satisfy the urgent demands that exist today.”
It is expected that the cost of the constellation will cost less than USD150 million and less than 2 years to build. Launch of the first satellite “Surveyor 1” is scheduled for early 2007 while the full 5 satellites are to be in place by 2009.
“The Tuyuan telemetry will be for proprietary purposes and therefore the signal will be received and processed by only Tuyuan and its strategic partner network but we have in-built provision for value added commercial organizations to hook into our infrastructure so as to provide special services outside our niche market…”, Mr. Joe Gatto of Tuyuan said. “We are welcoming proposals from all interested commercial parties and remain fully committed to working together to support and develop an entirely new approach to monitoring and measuring activities in the crop and environmental areas of the planet. We also view this enterprise as a significant step forward towards Global Peace.”
Dr. Pierre Engel added “… and we also have provision for co-operation with Think-tanks and scientific organizations whereby access to telemetry will granted where R&D programs are in accord with our objectives and any such work adopted or utilized by Tuyuan and or its Strategic Partners will return revenues to those organization for use for developing further benefit to humanity in the use of the Tuyuan infrastructures through IPR mechanisms.”
Background: Tuyuan Technologies, a supplier of IT crop information systems, and cities development interactive databases, announced the opening of a US$ 10 million first round investment on 1st. July 2004 led by Bolton Associates.
With Tuyuan’s first-generation database systems, customers such as the Central Planning Commission can aggregate global crop system data gleaned from a variety of on-line databases. The current round of financing will enable Tuyuan in addressing the multi-billion dollar global grains and risk markets with its next-generation SaStats™ System. The SaStats™ System has been 5 years in development and testing and processes raw telemetry data received from SAR Earth Observation Satellites into global predictive precision grains and risk statistics and broadcast live over a high-speed satellite broadband VPN network.
SaStats™ System is a proprietary systemization build of existing software technologies such as Geomania® and PG-Steamer® that have been adapted by Tuyuan for processing existing raw telemetry from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data Satellites into near-real-time statistical crop information. Outputs are delivered in near-real-time in its own proprietary on-line system or included in client-user existing software by live update.
SaStats™ System has been specifically developed to produce predictive crop statistics based on the measurement of known grain signatures which are then adjusted throughout the growing cycles of each crop. The heart of the SaStats™ System is the Geomania® Millennium Server, the power server of Geomania Co., Ltd of Seoul, South Korea which acts as the engine and the control center for all telemetry data processes including database management, information streaming and data ordering. PG-Streamer® is a registered product of Pixoneer of Dae-Jung, South Korea and provides the information processing from the satellite telemetry. All on-line components are controlled via the Geomania® engine which also includes the VSAT VPN network, data archive and management control.
Mindwarp©, the originating Feasibility Study carried out by Bolton Associates, within which the SaStats™ System was developed and tested. The study was further funded by the World Bank and the European Space Agency (ESA) during the period 1999 to 2004. The commissioned study was focused upon the generation of commercial information from satellite data in a near-real-time environment.
Founded in August 2001 and headquartered in Beijing, China, Tuyuan is led by a group of experienced and senior entrepreneurs who have created and managed leading telecommunications and Earth Observation businesses and companies. The Company is chaired by Zhou Xintie, the current Chairman and CEO of Beijing Tuyuan Information Technologies Co., Ltd., a leader in GIS information system applications in China. Peter Bolton recently joined Tuyuan as CEO. Mr. Bolton is a 30 year industry veteran who has served through international postings and assignments with the Earth Observation Satellite Company (Eosat) of the USA; SSC of Sweden; and Spot Image of France as well as in Singapore with Spot Asia. Mr. Bolton is the developer of the SaStats™ System and holds all Intellectual Property Rights to SaStats™, and the “Surveyor” SAR satellite constellation which will be under an exclusive master license to Tuyuan.
A number of other industry veterans which collectively bring many years of sales, business development, marketing and technology experience have been identified and nominated to other key executive positions within Tuyuan.
The Tuyuan Executive Team will be further enhanced by Dr. Pierre Engel, formerly a Director of Radarsat International Inc., of Vancouver, Canada, and prior to that with Spot Image and Spot Asia who will be heading up Tuyuan’s International Sales and Gateway Operations as Group General Manager and Director.
Mr. Joe Gatto also has joined the Tuyuan team as Director and General Manager International Business Development and Marketing bringing to Tuyuan a 30 year career in the satellite Earth Observation and Telecommunications industries.
(Source: Bolton Associates)
Beijing Tuyuan Information Technologies Co., Ltd
Kunminghu Garden – 11
95 Bei Si Huan Xi Lu
Beijing 100089 China
Tel: +86 10 8843 0267
Fax: +86 10 8843 1022
Tuyuan Technologies – China
http://www.tuyuan.com.cn
Contacts:
Bolton Associates – Asia
http://www.boltonassociates.com
peter.bolton@boltonassociates.com
Zhou Xintie – Executive Chairman – Beijing, China
zhouxt@tuyuan.com.cn
Peter Bolton – CEO – Asia
pjb@tuyuan.com.cn
Pierre Engel – Director, General Manager, International Sales & Gateway Operations – France
pierre.engel@tuyuan.com.cn
Joseph P Gatto Jr. – Director, General Manager International Business Development & Marketing – Australia, USA
jgatto@tuyuan.com.cn
