Advancing Small Satellite Earth Observation: Operational Spacecraft, Planned Missions and Future Concepts

The launch of Surrey’s UoSAT-12 in April 1999 heralded a new era in small-satellite Earth observation. The UoSAT-12 mission, Surrey’s first mini-satellite, supports a variety of payloads, including a 10-m panchromatic imager and a 32-m multispectral imager - both built at Surrey using COTS technology. In building these imagers, Surrey applied the lessons learned over sixteen microsatellite missions, and took advantage of the minisatellite class platform, which can support larger payloads and more complex missions. In the year since launch, UoSAT-12 has succeeded in a series of demonstrations of key remote-sensing technologies and techniques including autonomous station keeping, repeat ground track maintenance, high-speed communications, slewing and ground target tracking. This paper reviews these operational achievements and also describes next-generation remote sensing missions under development at Surrey. Spurred by the outstanding success of UoSAT-12, Surrey is already planning more ambitious remote sensing missions. Already, minisatellite advances are feeding back into microsatellites, such as an enhanced microsatellite with 12-m panchromatic and 24-m multispectral imaging. Future minisatellite missions are pushing the boundaries further, including 4-m panchromatic and 13-m multispectral payloads based on COTS technology. Planned missions and future concepts are presented which include use of pushbroom imagers, development of new imagers, Earth observations constellations and improved data handling as applied to small satellites. UoSAT-12 has proven that small satellites can offer rapid development, cost-constrained Earth observations missions. These affordable missions offer the opportunity for governmental and commercial organisation to target specific applications and provide emerging space nations with independent Earth observation

Technique standards for skin lesion imaging: a delphi consensus statement

IMPORTANCE Variability in the metrics for image acquisition at the total body, regional, close-up, and dermoscopic levels impacts the quality and generalizability of skin images. Consensus guidelines are indicated to achieve universal imaging standards in dermatology. OBJECTIVE To achieve consensus among members of the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC) on standards for image acquisition metrics using a hybrid Delphi method. EVIDENCE REVIEW Delphi study with 5 rounds of ratings and revisions until relative consensus was achieved. The initial set of statements was developed by a core group (CG) on the basis of a literature review and clinical experience followed by 2 rounds of rating and revisions. The consensus process was validated by an extended group (EG) of ISIC members through 2 rounds of scoring and revisions. In all rounds, respondents rated the draft recommendations on a 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree) scale, explained ratings of less than 5, and optionally provided comments. At any stage, a recommendation was retained if both mean and median rating was 4 or higher. RESULTS The initial set of 45 items (round 1) was expanded by the CG to 56 variants in round 2, subsequently reduced to 42 items scored by the EG in round 3, yielding an EG set of 33 recommendations (rounds 4 and 5): General recommendation (1 guideline), lighting (5), background color (3), field of view (3), image orientation (8), focus/depth of field (3), resolution (4), scale (3), color calibration (2), and image storage (1). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE This iterative process of ratings and comments yielded a strong consensus on standards for skin imaging in dermatology practice. Adoption of these methods for image standardization is likely to improve clinical practice, information exchange, electronic health record documentation, harmonization of clinical studies and database development, and clinical decision support. Feasibility and validity testing under real-world clinical conditions is indicated

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

Meeting abstrac

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Hard disk drives for spacecraft application

Accurate resolution imaging from Satellites involves large amounts of data that has to be stored on board the spacecraft computer. The data can be stored on Hard Disc Drives. However survival to the mechanical environment existing during the spacecraft launch and to the space environment during satellite operations are two major challenges in the use of HDDs for spacecraft applications. This paper describes the process that generated the design of an enclosure that has allowed conventional Personal Computer's HDDs to be used on board the SSTL spacecraft BEIJING-1. The design philosophy is discussed and the extensive test campaigns that supported the selection of a suitable HDD are described. The focus of the work was the design and implementation of a suspension system to reduce to acceptable levels the random vibration environment experienced by the HDD. The tests carried out on the suspension system showed that this was able to reduce by approximately 50% the rms acceleration experienced by the units. Thus allowing their use on the spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched in October 2005, and to date the HDD units are operating correctly

Hard disk drives for spacecraft application

Accurate resolution imaging from Satellites involves large amounts of data that has to be stored on board the spacecraft computer. The data can be stored on Hard Disc Drives. However survival to the mechanical environment existing during the spacecraft launch and to the space environment during satellite operations are two major challenges in the use of HDDs for spacecraft applications. This paper describes the process that generated the design of an enclosure that has allowed conventional Personal Computer's HDDs to be used on board the SSTL spacecraft BEIJING-1. The design philosophy is discussed and the extensive test campaigns that supported the selection of a suitable HDD are described. The focus of the work was the design and implementation of a suspension system to reduce to acceptable levels the random vibration environment experienced by the HDD. The tests carried out on the suspension system showed that this was able to reduce by approximately 50% the rms acceleration experienced by the units. Thus allowing their use on the spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched in October 2005, and to date the HDD units are operating correctly

Slot clouds: getting more from orbital slots with networking

The co-located satellites in the orbital slot together form a network and, particularly when using and communicating with the Internet Protocol, can be viewed as a network 'cloud' that provides functionality in a flexible manner

IPv6 and IPsec on a satellite in space

The popular Internet Protocol (IPv4) has been used operationally in space on the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) satellites for remote sensing tasks since 2003. The UK-DMC satellite carries the Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit (CLEO) as an experimental payload, and use of IPv4 with CLEO and to command and control the UK-DMC satellite was demonstrated in 2004. As a commercial Internet router, CLEO is also capable of using the newer IPv6 protocol, and of securing communications using IPsec. We describe our experiences in using IPv6 and IPsec onboard this satellite, and as part of a larger merged space/ground infrastructure built around use of the Internet Protocol. This is the first time that IPsec and IPv6 have been operated onboard a satellite in orbit