Lord Sainsbury said: "All three of the successful projects offer innovative ways of demonstrating small satellite technology and opening up new and attractive markets for their use."

Lord Sainsbury added: "Collaborative space missions have historically been large in order to meet the research needs of many partners. The use of constellations of small satellites can drive down the cost of access to space for governments and commercial users. This will open up new services for which a space-based solution would previously have been too expensive."

Under the MOSAIC programme �15m has been made available over three years from 2000/01 for project support to partnerships involving both industrial partners and end users.

Successful proposals will be part funded up to the level of 50%. The remainder of the funds can be made available either by the industrial or user partners.

This funding is intended to help transfer the UK's world leading capability in small satellites from the academic into the scientific and commercial markets.

The aim will be to stimulate industry to invest in small satellite missions, particularly for satellite communications, the largest and most rapidly expanding market for space products.

Commenting from the Farnborough Air Show, Professor Martin Sweeting, CEO & Managing Director of Surrey Satellite Technology said: "Winning funding for all three projects awarded by BNSC is a remarkable achievement and worth approximately �11M to SSTL. Today's announcement recognises SSTL's lead in small satellite technology, not only in the UK, but worldwide. The BNSC funding will catalyse these exciting and commercially important missions."

TOPSAT This is a mission led by DERA to provide relatively high-resolution imagery direct to the local user from a low cost small satellite. The mission consists of an advanced optical camera, able to form images of the earth at 2.5 m resolution, integrated with a micro-satellite that is capable of delivery this imagery direct to a mobile ground station. The mission has been made possible through the collaborative efforts of DERA, SSTL, RAL and NRSC and makes good use of the UK's world class capability in small satellites and high performance space missions.

DMC The third successful project is a proposal for a Disaster Monitoring Constellation sponsored by SSTL. Every year natural and man-made disasters cause devastation around the world through loss of life, widespread human suffering and huge economic losses. Current earth observation satellites offer infrequent images and often delivery of critical images may take months due to periodic cloud cover and tasking conflict. They are also very expensive and designed to be general-purpose instruments to meet many wide-ranging user requirements with spectral imaging characteristics that are not ideally suited to disaster monitoring functions. SSTL and its partners propose a network of affordable micro- satellites providing imaging on a daily basis as an affordable solution to the problem of disaster assessment and monitoring from space.