Prisma provides a unique opportunity for the Swedish Space Corporation to present itself to the European aerospace market. The Company has certainly even been heard of previously, but with a successful Prisma project behind them the door will hopefully be open for them to seriously begin to compete for European satellite projects.

The Swedish Space Corporation has many Swedish and Nordic satellites as merits. They also had the primary responsibility for designing and building ESA’s technology showcase SMART-1. Prisma is however the first time the Swedish Space Corporation on a commission by the Swedish National Space Board has had the entire responsibility for initiating, running and completing an international satellite project, and the sole responsibility for assembly of the satellite.
 
“Prisma is an opportunity for us to demonstrate that we can be the main supplier for a complicated satellite project and carry it over the goal line”, says Staffan Persson, who is the project leader for Prisma at the Swedish Space Corporation.
 
International confirmation
The idea behind what is today Prisma was born from an article that the Swedish Space Corporation’s Björn Jacobsson wrote in October 2004. There he concluded that applications within orbital dynamics and formation flight was an upcoming field and would be a good mission idea.
The idea was presented to the Swedish Space Corporation, and following that, to the Swedish National Space Board, who came back with a positive reply, with certain stipulations. One of these was that the Swedish Space Corporation could interest other European companies in participation.
 
“Partly it was a matter, naturally, of cost-sharing”, says Staffan Persson, “but an involvement from outside Sweden would also provide confirmation for the Swedish National Space Board that it was a good project”.
 
They received such confirmation almost immediately.

“We talked to the German national aerospace organisation, DLR, with the French Alcatel and with the Danish Technical University, DTU, and all of them were interested. It was only the German Jena Optronik that didn’t join us”, says Staffan Persson. “Since then it has just been a case of getting on with it”, he continues with a smile.

Good collaboration
The Swedish Space Corporation is itself developing the platform and is responsible for all sub-systems. The French, Germans and Danes are developing the instruments and certain software that is necessary for the formation flight. Far and away the principal share of the complex software however is being developed and tested by the Swedish Space Corporation. They must also be involved to a certain extent in the other systems, as they are constructing for example the computer and propulsion systems.
 
Other Swedish companies are also involved, such as Omnisys in Gothenburg who are constructing the onboard power systems, Saab Space who are manufacturing some of the electronics and mechanics. NanoSpace, ECAPS, and the Institute for Space Physics together with Chalmers University of Technology are contributing with onboard experiments.
 
Staffan Persson and the others became a little apprehensive when the French national space organisation CNES took over the French participation from Alcatel partway into the project.
 
“We were a bit concerned that CNES as a large authority would arrive with a mass of bureaucracy and inflexibility. Such was not the case at all however. It has gone exceptionally well and they have been very un-presuming, says Staffan Persson.
 
On the whole he thinks that the tone in the project has been very positive.
 
“There has been a lot of dialogue and cooperation. Everyone WANTS this to happen and to be good. There is a generous attitude and everyone wants to solve the problems that arise with a positive spirit”.

 
Prisma has already given results
Prisma has also already given the Swedish Space Corporation two contracts with ESA and a foothold in a third.
 
One of the ESA projects that the Swedish Space Corporation is involved in is Proba-3, ESA’s test-satellite for formation flight. The project was in the start-up phase when the Swedish Space Corporation initiated Prisma and ESA was not particularly interested in Prisma because they had their own project. Now Prisma will be a precursor to Proba-3 and of course highly interesting for ESA.
 
“The Swedish Space Corporation have now been asked to be main supplier for Proba-3, and that is naturally wonderful”, beams Staffan Persson.
 
The other ESA project that the Swedish Space Corporation is participating in is Small GEO, a small innovative telecommunications satellite. The Swedish Space Corporation is also involved in SMART-OLEV, an "auxiliary satellite" intended to be launched in order to extend the operational lifetime of geostationary telecommunications satellites.
 
So Prisma has already borne fruit for the Swedish Space Corporation, despite there being some time left until project completion.
At the time of writing it is not certain when Prisma will ascend into the sky, or where from. The plan is to launch Prisma together with the French solar-observation satellite Picard using a Russian-Ukrainian Dnepr launch vehicle. Prisma is calculated to be ready early in 2009.

Kim Bergström
November 2007

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