Archives for 2020

2020 was the time when the space scene was lively again, with the Thai government pushing for space-activity-related legislation and creating mechanisms to promote and support both the government and the private sector to develop the space industry together. This is one of the target industries in the new S-curve that will increase Thailand’s investment capacity and its role in developing the space industry and ultimately add value to the Thai economy.

The private sector also plays an important role in developing the economy and stimulating investment in the space industry. This year, mu Space and Advanced Technology Public Company Limited (mu Space Corp.) attracted investors from several industries and businesses to invest in the space industry, such as TOT Public Company Limited, executives from Dow Chemical Group, SCG, as well as the current investors, including Nice Apparel Group, B.Grimm Group, Majuven Fund, a private business group as well as a group of other minor investors, i.e., executives from the UCLA Foundation. The value of ‘mu Space’ has increased to more than $100 million through a Series B fundraising.

‘mu Space’ CEO, Varayuth Yenbamroong, on December 25th, 2020, stated during a soft opening event of the first spaceship factory in Thailand that “the fund recently raised will be used on quickly build a large-scale factory to produce and assemble the first spaceship of Thailand, along with satellite parts and commercial spaceships for domestic affairs, communications, national security such as creating a locally made GPS (Global Positioning System), robotic testing, autonomous system testing for unmanned vehicles to be used on the Moon mission. The factory will be equipped with the 5G communication system. It will also serve as a platform to develop “Space IDC” technologies, with a plan to test the “Space IDC”(Space Internet Data Center) simulation in the first quarter of 2021.”

“Space IDC,” or Space Internet Data Center services, is a project jointly created by ‘mu Space’ Corp. and TOT Public Company Limited that aims to provide a data center service with a server, both located in space.

“mu Space’ is planning to build 11 gateway stations initially in Bangkok to operate the upcoming LEO satellite while preparing to propose as many as 8 projects from US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the start of 2021. ‘mu Space’ has gains a lot of experience and has grown significantly from submitting 7 space technology development projects, with its Tipping Point Solicitation Project passing the first hearing. “There is a good chance that ‘mu Space’ will be awarded with the project contract,” said Varayuth.

Despite the presence of COVID-19 pandemic, ‘mu Space’ is planning to hire about 100 positions, starting with the first 50 positions in Q1 2021 to create skilled laborers, in line with the national space technology and industry development plan.

Voyager Space Holdings, Inc. (Voyager) has announced the company’s intent to acquire a majority stake in XO Markets and that firm’s largest subsidiary, Nanoracks.

Nanoracks is a leading provider of commercial space services and, as part of the transaction, Voyager will be infusing significant growth capital into the business to support the continued growth of Nanoracks use of the International Space Station (ISS) on behalf of itself and its customers, and the Nanoracks Space Outpost Program for private space platforms.

Nanoracks has launched more than 1,000 projects to ISS, including microgravity research, smallsats and missions to both LEO and deep space. Nanoracks and also recently launched the first commercial airlock – The Bishop – on the SpaceX CRS-21 mission on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

The Bishop Airlock is the first-ever commercial, permanent addition to the International Space Station, bringing five times more customer volume than currently available through the existing, government-operated airlock.

The company is also actively working toward its long-term Outpost Program, which will enable Nanoracks to own, operate and leverage commercial space stations, repurposing in-space hardware to make discoveries that will change life on Earth.

Voyager recently announced that it would be expanding its footprint within the space supply chain via the acquisition of a majority interest in The Launch Company, which would join current subsidiaries Pioneer Astronautics and Altius Space Machines. In addition to the firm’s growing subsidiary list, Voyager has also continued to increase the members of their executive team. The company recently expanded a Washington, D.C. office with the appointment of industry veteran Eric Stallmer as EVP of Government Affairs and Public Policy.

“Over the past decade my team and I have worked to grow Nanoracks from a garage-based start up into the first commercial space company with customers,” said Jeffrey Manber, CEO of Nanoracks. “We continue to push the envelope of what’s possible in commercial space. This critical leap forward takes place as we have worked closely with NASA, the European Space Agency and industry partners to equip the International Space Station with our Bishop Airlock. With Voyager, we’re confident in our expanded team’s ability to continue to deliver game-changing technology industry-wide.”

“Voyager is always on the lookout for organizations doing things differently. Our model is best suited for companies like Nanoracks, who are at the forefront of innovation and growing rapidly,” said Matthew Kuta, President and COO of Voyager Space Holdings. “With Voyager’s support, Nanoracks can continue to do what it does best: develop in-space services and technology that is poised to transform life on Earth and in space.”

China sent a new remote sensing satellite into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 11:44 p.m., Beijing time, on Sunday, December 27, 2020.

The satellite, Yaogan-33, successfully entered the planned orbit. This mission also sent a micro and nano technology experiment satellite into orbit. The two satellites will be used for scientific experiments, land resources survey, crop yield estimation and disaster prevention and reduction.

The satellite was launched aboard a Long March-4C rocket and was the 357th flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) company, Spacebel, with a new contract to supply the payload data ground segment for the upcoming Altius stratosphere observation mission. This operational ground infrastructure will be located in Redu and Uccle and will process the data produced by the satellite’s on-board instruments before their transmission to the various users.

As part of the European “Earth Watch” program, with Belgium as the main contributor accounting for 94% of the budget, Altius is a smallsat dedicated to the operational monitoring of stratospheric ozone profiles. This new ESA mission, initiated by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (IASB), will detect the composition of the atmosphere and changes in the stratospheric ozone layer. In addition to greenhouse gases, the satellite will measure other traces of atmospheric gases such as aerosols that are damaging the quality of air on Earth.

In view of the current environmental challenges, Altius will also provide a response, for a minimum period of 3 years, to the imminent shortage of satellites capable of monitoring the presence of the atmosphere components.

From a technological point of view, Altius is characterized by a sightline on the horizon that should establish ozone profiles with the required resolution. In keeping with the Proba family, the development and operation of the future Belgian satellite will go along with cost optimization. Its launch is scheduled for the end of 2023 from Kourou.

Thierry du Pré-Werson, Managing Director of SPACEBEL, said, “SPACEBEL is already in charge of the development of Altius’ on-board software. Today, ESA has appointed SPACEBEL as prime contractor for the definition, system architecture and integration of the payload data management ground segment. We are carrying out this industrial prime contractor role with the scientific partners of the IASB (Brussels) and the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. The B.USOC centre and Space Applications Systems NV are also part of the consortium and contribute to the mission planning and operations preparation. This new project represents a significant workload for our teams. It is a great recognition of SPACEBEL’s know-how as a leader in the European Space sector. I would like to thank BELSPO (Belgian Federal Science Policy) and ESA for their confidence. We know what is at stake, it is time to work together and ensure the success of this project.”

Jean-Christophe Schyns, in charge of the mission follow-up at BELSPO, pointed out, “This project, initiated by the IASB and supported by BELSPO, has its Space segment developed by the Belgian QinetiQ Space, while the Belgian OIP is in charge of the design and development of the instrument. Both companies rely upon several subcontractors from our country, but also from Canada, Romania and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, i.e. the 3 other mission contributing countries. The fact that SPACEBEL has now been appointed by ESA as industrial prime contractor for the Altius ground segment clearly confirms the involvement desired by our country in this mission which is and will be – from the emergence of the project in an IASB laboratory to the data processing on the Uccle plateau when the satellite will be in orbit – a success of which Belgium can be proud.”

China’s new medium-lift carrier rocket Long March-8 made its maiden flight on Tuesday, December 22, 2020, sending five satellites into planned orbit, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

The rocket blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of southern China’s island province of Hainan at 12:37 p.m. (Beijing Time).

The Long March-8 rocket has a total length of 50.3 meters, with a takeoff mass of 356 tons and can carry a payload of at least 4.5 tons to SSO at an altitude of 700 km.

The rocket fills the gap in China’s launch capability to SSO from 3 to 4.5 tons and, according to CNSA, is of great significance for accelerating the upgrading of launch vehicles.

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ANYWAVES has been selected by the French Space Agency (CNES) to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a Reflectarray antenna for smallsats.

Selected from a call for tender, the French manufacturer is now launching the development of a folding antenna, Reflectarray type, working from the X- to the Ka-band and perfectly suited to the smallest platforms. The goal is to develop the French industrial sector of wide beam coverage folding antennas and pave the way to new solar system missions and commercial applications in low Earth orbit.

The interest France and Europe pay to solar missions keeps growing and it is now time to shift toward next generation communications involving downlinks and inter-satellites links, with a particular effort on long distance communications between a small platform and Earth. It is in this context, impelled by NASA and its MarCO-A and MarCO-B cubesats equipped with a X-band Reflectarray technology, that the French Space Agency launched a call for tender to demonstrate the technical feasibility of this solution, up to the Ka-band, by the French industrial sector.

To face this challenge, ANYWAVES will be surrounded by major actors from the New Space such as CLIX Industries, COMAT and MECANO ID. The project was launched on December 16th and is divided into three steps — the first one, planned to last 12 months, will be dedicated to the manufacturing of a Reflectarray antenna demonstrator. The next steps will be about developing and qualifying an engineering model and then testing a flight model for the first opening mission. The final goal is to dispose of a Reflectarray antenna made of several panels, suited to 6, 12 or 16U platforms and suitable for RF operations from X- to Ka-bands.

Winning this call for tender is the opportunity for ANYWAVES to initiate the French sector of Reflectarray to smallsats. The company’s ambition is to become the first European antenna equipment manufacturer to put into orbit a Ka-band Reflectarray suited to commercial needs.

Emulating the conduct of a parabolic reflector, thanks to material structuration, this technology is made of plane panels folded over each other and folded again on a carrier. The Reflectarray antenna is both compact and easy to deploy, perfectly suited to the space constraints that smallsats imply. Its plan panels include an active face that reflects RF waves and controls the phase locally reflected. It also includes a structure which guarantees rigidity and stability. This is supplemented by folding and – or panels guiding mechanisms, positioning and-or locking devices between the lateral and the central sections plus a passive thermal control.

HawkEye 360 Inc. has shipped their second cluster of satellites to the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida — the satellites are scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 no earlier than January 2021 as part of Spaceflight Inc.’s SXRS-3 ride share mission. HawkEye Cluster 2 is the first of a series of next generation satellites HawkEye 360 is deploying to complete its baseline constellation.

This shipment milestone means that Cluster 2 will soon be joining the company’s Cluster 1 satellites in orbit. The three Cluster 2 satellites are larger and more powerful, able to collect multiple types of signals simultaneously for longer periods of time. These workhorse satellites will allow HawkEye 360 to offer increasingly robust space-based RF data insights to its US government, international government, and commercial customers across a wide range of frequencies.

Each Cluster 2 satellite contains a customized RF payload developed by HawkEye 360. The satellite buses were manufactured by UTIAS Space Flight Laboratory. Beyond Cluster 2, HawkEye 360 is fully financed for the launch of 15 more satellites in 2021 and early 2022. The company is completing development of satellites for Clusters 3 and 4, anticipating launch in the middle of 2021. Clusters 5, 6, and 7 are in development, with anticipated launches over the next 18 months. The average global revisit rate will be less than an hour.

HawkEye 360’s growing constellation identifies and precisely geolocates a broad set of RF signals from emitters such as VHF marine radios, UHF push-to-talk radios, maritime and land-based radar systems, L-band satellite devices, and emergency beacons. HawkEye 360 processes and analyzes this data using proprietary algorithms to deliver actionable insights to customers.

“The upcoming launch of HawkEye Cluster 2 firmly establishes HawkEye 360 as the most advanced provider of RF geoanalytics,” said John Serafini, CEO. “These new satellites continue to push the boundaries of commercial RF sensing. Cluster 2 has up to ten times the collection capacity of our current cluster and improved geolocation accuracy. Our customers are asking for more data over more regions, so these next generation satellites are critical to supplying our customers with relevant and timely RF geospatial intelligence for national security, maritime domain awareness, environmental protection, and countless other applications.”

HawkEye 360 Inc. is supporting a commercial radio frequency (RF) geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) pilot program for the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), using its constellation of formation flying satellites to deliver RF data and analytics to the agency and combatant commands so analysts can explore how this new source of commercial data can augment intelligence activities.

The commercial RF collected as part of this effort, is being examined for feasibility in supporting a variety of GEOINT applications, such as tipping and cueing of other data sources to include electro-optical and radar imaging satellites. United States combatant commands are also using the data to improve maritime awareness and cooperation with regional allies through unclassified sharable data and analytics.

The RF GEOINT pilot, which started in September, leverages HawkEye 360’s commercial integration study contract with the National Reconnaissance Office to access commercial RF data that is then integrated into NGA’s Predictive GEOINT Prototype (PGP), which supports an agile development approach for exploring new commercial sources and analytics.

HawkEye 360 is the first company to deliver commercial RF data and analytics using formation flying satellites. HawkEye 360 launched its initial three satellites in December 2018 to globally identify and geolocate a broad range of RF signals. HawkEye 360 is growing the constellation to improve capacity and revisit rate, starting with the planned launch of HawkEye Cluster 2 this January 2021. Cluster 2 provides over four times the collection capacity as Cluster 1.

Read more about the RF GEOINT pilot through the NGA’s pilot program announcement.

“This pilot program is placing our RF signal data and analytics into the hands of end users, so they can leverage this powerful resource to fulfill mission needs,” said John Serafini, Chief Executive Officer, HawkEye 360. “Commercial RF GEOINT complements traditional government systems by offering analysts a readily accessible layer of RF knowledge. The large regions we cover, the range of signals we collect, and the accuracy of our results all contribute to forming a richer analysis.”