The Disaster Monitoring Constellation was a unique concept in which Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) built a series of Earth observation microsatellites which were owned and operated by members of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation consortium. The first generation was coordinated by DMCii, a commercial imaging company.

The constellation operated in a low Earth orbit and in the visible to near-infra-red part of the spectrum, which made them very useful for crop and forest monitoring as well as general Earth observation. Each satellite was phased at 90° to the next to enable a daily revisit of a target point on the Earth's surface. Imagery was also used to augment data acquired from the Landsat series of satellites.