In virtually every friendship group, there’s that one friend whose job is just cooler than everyone else’s. It could be in a particularly interesting subject area, entail lots of exotic travel, or involve rubbing shoulders with celebrated names.
Damon Olloman has long been that friend. After selling jets in BAE Systems Air and being involved in campaigns around the world, he made the switch to selling satellites. Now, based in Finland as the Head of International Missions Sales at ICEYE– a company that operates satellite missions and enables persistent monitoring of Earth from space – Damon is working at the coalface of the New Space industry.
ICEYE provides customers with everything they need to control their own space mission. This includes building the satellites themselves, as well as providing launch and ground capabilities, training, ongoing support, and upgrades. The company is now launching satellites at a rate of 10-15 per year – all based on a standardised specification to ensure production efficiency.
As well as for customer missions, ICEYE uses the same satellite design for its own constellation. This is where its core value proposition of delivering Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capabilities comes into play.
The role of SAR
First things first then: what value does SAR technology bring to the space proposition in terms of enhancing capability on Earth?
It all comes down to visibility and situational awareness. Historically, space missions have relied on optical satellites to provide images of Earth. However, this only works during daylight hours when there is minimal cloud cover. Optical satellites can’t see in the dark and a cloudy day significantly reduces the effectiveness of optical images.
In contrast, SAR satellites enable users to observe Earth nearly 24/7. They provide significantly higher coverage and reliability, with the ability to see through clouds and at night. This makes SAR ideal for customers that want real awareness of what’s going on. From monitoring floods and forest fires to national defence scenarios, SAR enables persistent observation of a particular location.
“SAR allows for better use of resources and better situational awareness in all conditions.”Damon Olloman, Head of International Missions Sales, ICEYE
As Damon explains: “SAR technology can help customers with very specific needs. For example, a country in Asia might suspect that vessels are coming into its territorial waters for illegal fishing. As well as being extremely difficult and costly to physically monitor a large expanse of water, the heavy cloud cover in the region would make it virtually impossible with optical images. By providing near constant surveillance, SAR satellites can spot those vessels and share data with the coastguard or Navy to intercept them.”
Of course, there are plenty of other applications. ICEYE’s SAR technology has already helped to combat illegal logging in the Amazon and shape responses to natural disasters. Then there’s the national security aspect of monitoring the movements of adversary armed forces for suspicious activities in particular countries or regions.
Ultimately, the possibilities are virtually endless. “SAR allows for better use of resources and better situational awareness in all conditions. It provides more coverage and more visits to areas of interest, providing advantages on Earth from space. It’s therefore not surprising that all sectors are showing an increased interest in SAR satellites.”
Building relationships
Given his previous life at BAE Systems, Damon is uniquely positioned to comment on one particular aspect of ICEYE’s development: the growing relationship between the two companies. We recently partnered with ICEYE to provide its leading SAR capability as part of our Azalea cluster of satellites to help us deliver high-quality military intelligence from space – a collaboration that will help protect and defend UK interests.
So, what does he think given his experience of both parties? “BAE Systems is the big British prime. There’s no better organisation for us to partner with in the UK. The level of prestige and track record that goes back decades, combined with the innovation and agility of ICEYE, is a match made in heaven. The two contrasting energies complementing each other provides a really strong model for the future.”
This partnership is an example of the collaboration-first mind-set that Damon believes can help the space industry as a whole tap into innovation. With the rate of innovation across the industry higher than ever, encouraging more partnership-based structures could prove invaluable in helping UK space move at the speed required in today’s world and flourish over the coming years.
Moving at pace
This dynamism is something that ICEYE has incorporated into its own operations, particularly in terms of speed of development. The New Space philosophy – something ICEYE has well and truly embraced – involves trying new things, not being afraid of failure, and incorporating the learnings from failed experiments into future missions. This is what Damon believes enables businesses to improve and develop capability faster.
“Space provides opportunity for experimentation. Our approach is that if we think we need to improve something, we just go and make changes and try it on the next mission. It might fail, but we always include backups and secondary capabilities so we never lose the mission. And we always learn something that we can implement in the next launch.”
This acceleration is something he’s seeing across the space sector in the UK. Whereas building satellites was reserved for the richest nations and companies – and would take many years to come to fruition – new technology is now making it possible to build satellites in a much faster and more affordable way. Most importantly, these satellites are just as capable in terms of performance.
“Space provides opportunity for experimentation. Our approach is that if we think we need to improve something, we just go and make changes and try it on the next mission.”Damon Olloman, Head of International Missions Sales, ICEYE
This is illustrated by ICEYE’s SAR payload, which can be produced at high volume for an affordable price – thereby making space accessible to many more nations and private organisations around the world. Again, it comes back to fast-paced innovation – something that Damon believes will help keep ICEYE at the forefront of the industry.
“Our focus is on trying to sell as many satellites as we can, and maintaining our position as the leader in New Space SAR satellites. To do that we need to continue to rapidly develop the tech. It’s like the smartphone philosophy; you change the hardware every two or three years and update the software every three or four months. That’s pretty much what we do and we’re not planning on slowing down.”
ICEYE has already achieved a lot in a relatively short timeframe. And, given the speed at which the industry as a whole is continuing to evolve, there’s clearly a lot more to come.
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About the author
John Young, Head of Strategic Campaigns, Space
Further reading:
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Client Conversation: Between the Data and the Deep Sea | BAE Systems
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The significance of space for multi-domain defence operations | BAE Systems
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Why do we need digital transformation in space? | BAE Systems
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Enabling decision advantage in the cyber domain | BAE Systems
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We have lift-off: the BAE Systems tech supporting ESA’s Juice deep space mission | BAE Systems