Archives for October 2019

Photo of Rwanda’s RWASat-1 smallsat.

In a posting by David Oni at the Space in Africa infosite, he reports that the African space industry has recorded another milestone as the nations of Rwanda and Egypt have launched their 1st and 8th satellites (NARSScube-1 and RWASat-1), respectively.

The satellites were carried aboard Japan’s Kounotori-8, (aka HTV-8), a robotic cargo spacecraft carrying a payload of supplies, experimental materials and new replacement batteries to help power the International Space Station (ISS).

The HTV-8 which was launched by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) from one of the company’s H-IIB rockets, which was designed to carry both a pressurized and unpressurized cargo compartments.

The rocket, which was commissioned by Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), took off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center at its scheduled instantaneous launch window of 12:05 PM EDT (1:05 AM JST) on Tuesday, September 24, and arrived the International Space Station on Saturday,  September 28.

NARSScube-1 is a single-unit cubesat built by Egypt’s National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSS).

Photo is courtesy of NARSS.

Among the cargo carried onboard the HTV-8 rocket were three smallsats (AQT-D, NARSScube-1 and RWASat-1) for deployment from the International Space Station via the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD).

NARSScube-1 and RWASat-1 were built to the cubesat standard, and are scheduled to be released from Kibo module’s airlock later this year.

Journalist David Oni.

To read the entire article,
please access this direct Space in Africa infosite link…

Perigee Aerospace has signed an agreement to use the Southern Launch rocket facilities in South Australia, starting next year.

Signed at the 8th Space Forum in Adelaide, South Australia, the agreement sees the two New Space startups work together to launch small payload rockets over the Great Australian Bight. Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp signed the deal with Perigee CEO Yoon Shin at the beginning of Space Week in South Australia. The pair committed to testing the launch facility in 2020 ahead of regular, commercial launches from 2021.

Yoon Shin said he already had customers for his small launch vehicle Blue Whale, pictured to the left, designed to lift smallsats into low altitude high inclination orbits. “We have various customers willing to launch their payloads ranging from 35 to 50 kilograms on our rocket,” he said. “So we are making some of the deals, and since our launch date is secured, right now we can start progressing those deals even further.”

Started in 2012, Perigee Aerospace began by developing and launching numerous sounding rockets for meteorological research for the Korean government. In 2018 and 2019 the company received two rounds of venture capital backing from some of South Korea’s leading technology investors including Samsung Venture Investments and LB Investment (a subsidiary of LG) to support the development of Blue Whale. The company is also supported by KAIST, South Korea’s top technical research institution.

Damp said securing a commercial launch partner with such good backing would fast track the development of the launch site at Whaler’s Way at the tip of the Eyre Peninsula. He said there would not be a problem building the necessary infrastructure in a year because Southern Launch had been granted Major Project status by the South Australian Government and the physical requirements of a New Space project were not massive.

“A lot of people say ‘space launch! this means Cape Canaveral’, you know, bulldozers, all this type of stuff,” Damp said. “In reality, we’re putting up a glorified garden shed for the vehicle assembly and then a piece of concrete, which is about the same size footprint as a residential home. So this is tiny, tiny equipment to launch rockets into space. It’s called New Space.”

The 1190 hectare Whaler’s Way site is about a 35 minute drive from the regional center of Port Lincoln. The complex is 250 km. west of Adelaide and 500 km. south of Woomera, the historic rocket launch site that is restricted to military use.

Damp said the project was an example of how the entire business model around space has changed. “It’s the small sats, a couple of kilograms, helping farmers get connected to their land, or monitoring illegal shipping, fishing, you name it.”

Shin said he started negotiations with Southern Launch after meeting Damp at the International Astronautical Congress in Bremen, Germany, in 2018. He said there were three main reasons for signing up with Southern Launch, the first being its location, which is suitable for launching smallsats into sun synchronous or polar, or inclinations down to 60 degrees into orbit, which are the inclinations most of the customers are interested in. The second reason was that launching over the Great Australian Bight meant there was little air or maritime traffic and the third reason was the strategy of the newly established Australian Space Agency to prioritize commercial applications.

The Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex in South Australia will be capable of launching rockets like Rocket Lab’s Electron, pictured here.

Australia aims to grow the space market segment from AU$3.9 billion to AU$12 billion by 2030 and double space industry employment to 30,000. South Australia has been a significant player in the nation’s space industry and is home to major Tier 1 defence companies and several emerging space startups. The space industry in South Australia received a further boost in April when it was announced the $245 million national SmartSat CRC would be headquartered in the state. The research centre will join the Australian Space Agency at an innovation neighborhood called Lot Fourteen in the CBD on Adelaide. Lot Fourteen will also house the Defence and Space Landing Pad, Mission Control Centre, Space Discovery Centre and a growing ecosystem of space startups such as Myriota and Inovor.

Article by Jim Plouffe, Contributor, The Lead

A launch agreement for the first two satellites of many more to follow has been signed with Kepler Communications, which will be working with Space Logistics B.V (ISL) and GK Launch Services. Kepler’s satellites will be sent into sun-synchronous orbit in Q2-Q3 2020, and will be the first of multiple batches of the next-generation platform, forming part of Kepler’s Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation for global data services.

Kepler’s next generation of satellites will incorporate both a high-capacity Ku-band communications system and a narrowband payload, for both high-speed data transfers and low-power direct-to-satellite IoT connectivity. Planning to place approximately 140 satellites in LEO in three incremental phases, from 2020 to 2023, Kepler continues to execute on schedule against plan. Kepler has two demonstration satellites in orbit that are currently delivering Kepler’s high-capacity data transfer service to a number of early customers.      

Jared Bottoms, Head of Launch & Satellite Programs at Kepler said that ISL has been a key partner for Kepler as they have grown in their deployment strategy. They are excited to continue to use their unique deployers and services, this time with GK launch services to deploy the first of the next generation. ISL and Kepler partnered for the company’s first inaugural mission which successfully launched Kepler’s first satellite into orbit in January 2018, and its next satellite later in November in the same year. 

Abe Bonnema, Director of ISL, added saying that following the successful partnership for the launch of their demonstrator satellites, they are pleased and grateful to be selected by Kepler again for this important task of getting the first next-generation satellites to orbit on their 27th ISILaunch Campaign with their Soyuz partners next year. 

GK Launch Services CEO, Alexander Serkin concluded saying that they are happy that Kepler has chosen Soyuz-2 LV for launching its next-generation satellites. The GK team possesses all necessary competences to successfully and smoothly implement the mission that they hope will become a good basis for building a relationship with Kepler for future missions.

The company’s LEO constellation will grow to become a space data relay system to serve other constellations with high-speed data backhaul capabilities. Today, Kepler is focused on building the install base for Global Data Service™, its pole-to-pole wideband connectivity service for mobile and fixed applications. EverywhereIOT™, Kepler’s affordable solution for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, will enter user trials in the coming months. 

Orbit Fab,  one of the companies competing in this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in San Francisco this week, has closed a seed round of $3 million. The funding comes from Type 1 Ventures, TechStars and others, and will help Orbit Fab continue to build on the great momentum it has already bootstrapped with its space-based robotic refueling technology.

You might remember the name Orbit Fab from a milestone accomplishment the young company achieved earlier this year: Becoming the first startup to supply water to the International Space Station, itself an achievement but also a key demonstration of the viability of its technology for use in orbital satellite refueling. Refueling satellites could have tremendous impact on the commercial satellite business, extending the operating life of expensive satellites considerably, which translates to better margins and more profitable businesses.

Orbit Fab’s first space payload, the ISS water resupply robot.

Thanks to co-founders Daniel Faber and Jeremy Schiel’s connections in the space industry, from more than 15 years working in space technology businesses in a leadership capacity, the company was able to demonstrate its technology working in space less than a year after Orbit Fab was actually founded. Faber, Orbit Fab’s CEO, and Schiel, the startup’s CMO, met when both were working at Deep Space Industries — Faber as CEO and Schiel as a contractor.

“We ended up reconnecting later on and really looking at a few different business models on how to push the industry forward,” Schiel said in an interview. “The one that really landed with customers, and the one that resonated with the industry was refueling satellites. Elon [Musk] has been making rockets reusable — we thought it’s time that we make satellites reusable as well.”

Starting from this realization, the pair founded the company in January 2018. They then secured their first round of pre-seed investment from Bolt in San Francisco in June that year, and also landed two contracts —  including one with NASA, and one with the International Space Station National Laboratory.

“Basically in four-and-a-half months, we got flight-qualified and human-rated from NASA our two tanker test beds that we flew to the International Space Station in December 2018, and March of 2019,” Shield said.

How did they do it with that speed? Faber credits their rapid progress largely to lead engineer James Bultitude, an accomplished space engineer with five payloads on the International Space Station already.

“He took [the project] from a napkin through to flight hardware in four-and-a-half months,” Faber said. “All qualified to NASA human-rated safety standards, which was quite the feat. We really had to push hard on NASA.”

Faber said that the company’s ability to spur the U.S. space agency into action has been a key driver of its success. In fact, he relayed a story in which their National Lab demonstration payload was actually left off of its intended flight, but the team was able to get its cargo approved by top NASA decision-makers over the course of a weekend and just barely made the cut as a result.

As for working with NASA as a startup, Faber said that it’s become a very different affair, with the agency eager and adapting to working more with younger companies and startups bringing a different pace of innovation to the field.

“The change is almost palpable on the phone with NASA – you can almost hear them changing,” he said.

At Disrupt, Orbit Fab demonstrated their robotic connector for refueling on stage for the first time. The idea is that satellite makers will build their standard nozzles into their designs, and then a robotic refueler will be able to seek out the nozzle, open and then close on to the coupler, forming a solid connection to allow propellant transfer.

Already, Orbit Fab is talking to partners, including Northrop Grumman, and it’s a member of the Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations (CONFERS), an industry group that aims to make robotic service and maintenance of satellites a viable reality.

By Darrell Etherington, TechCrunch