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Archives for June 2020

Momentus to Support the Taiwanese IRIS-A Mission with NCKU and ODYSSEUS Space

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Momentus recently signed a launch service agreement with NCKU Space Laboratory and ODYSSEUS Space.

The company is supporting the IRIS-A mission, which is of strategic importance to Taiwan and is the first of three satellite launches, with follow up missions IRIS-B and IRIS-C due to reach space in 2022 and 2023. IRIS-A will be equipped with Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to achieve a Doppler shift estimation and improve the quality of downlink signal, increasing the efficiency of future IoT constellations of smallsats intended to monitor objects from space.

ODYSSEUS is a young startup based in Taiwan created by French professionals coming from the European space sector. They have experience and expertise both in Asia and in Europe to uniquely address the booming global market of small satellites applications.

ODYSSEUS has been working with National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) of Tainan, Taiwan, for many years now. IoT is a hot topic in Taiwan and Momentus is delighted to be working with leaders in the sector to bring the technology to space.

The Momentus Vigoride solution is highly innovative and provides smallsat developers, such as NCKU and ODYSSEUS, with long awaited flexibility in the choice of their orbit and their timeline.


National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) of Tainan, Taiwan, team.

 

JPL’s CubeSat’s Small Footprint Accomplishes a Big Feat

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ASTERIA was deployed from the International Space Station on
November 20, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

Long before it was deployed into low-Earth orbit from the International Space Station in Nov. 2017, the tiny ASTERIA spacecraft had a big goal: to prove that a satellite roughly the size of a briefcase could perform some of the complex tasks much larger space observatories use to study exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. A new paper soon to be published in the Astronomical Journal describes how ASTERIA (short for Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics) didn’t just demonstrate it could perform those tasks but went above and beyond, detecting the known exoplanet 55 Cancri e.

Scorching hot and about twice the size of Earth, 55 Cancri e orbits extremely close to its Sun-like parent star. Scientists already knew the planet’s location; looking for it was a way to test ASTERIA’s capabilities. The tiny spacecraft wasn’t initially designed to perform science; rather, as a technology demonstration, the mission’s goal was to develop new capabilities for future missions. The team’s technological leap was to build a small spacecraft that could conduct fine pointing control — essentially the ability to stay very steadily focused on an object for long periods. 

Based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the mission team engineered new instruments and hardware, pushing past existing technological barriers to create their payload. Then they had to test their prototype in space. Though its prime mission was only 90 days, ASTERIA received three mission extensions before the team lost contact with it last December. 

The CubeSat used fine pointing control to detect 55 Cancri e via the transit method, in which scientists look for dips in the brightness of a star caused by a passing planet. When making exoplanet detections this way, a spacecraft’s own movements or vibrations can produce jiggles in the data that could be misinterpreted as changes in the star’s brightness. The spacecraft needs to stay steady and keep the star centered in its field of view. This allows scientists to accurately measure the star’s brightness and identify the tiny changes that indicate the planet has passed in front of it, blocking some of its light. 

ASTERIA follows in the footsteps of a small satellite flown by the Canadian Space Agency called MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars), which in 2011 performed the first transit detection of 55 Cancri e. MOST was about six times the volume of ASTERIA – still incredibly small for an astrophysics satellite. Equipped with a 5.9-inch (15-centimeter) telescope, MOST was also capable of collecting six times as much light as ASTERIA, which carried 2.4-inch (6-centimeter) telescope. Because 55 Cancri e blocks out only 0.04 percent of its host star’s light, it was an especially challenging target for ASTERIA. 

“Detecting this exoplanet is exciting, because it shows how these new technologies come together in a real application,” said Vanessa Bailey, the principal investigator for ASTERIA’s exoplanet science team at JPL. “The fact that ASTERIA lasted more than 20 months beyond its prime mission, giving us valuable extra time to do science, highlights the great engineering that was done at JPL and MIT.” 

Big Feat

The mission made what’s known as a marginal detection, meaning the data from the transit would not, on its own, have convinced scientists that the planet existed. (Faint signals that look similar to a planet transit can be caused by other phenomena, so scientists have a high standard for declaring a planet detection.) But by comparing the CubeSat’s data with previous observations of the planet, the team confirmed that they were indeed seeing 55 Cancri e. As a tech demo, ASTERIA also didn’t undergo the typical prelaunch preparations for a science mission, which meant the team had to do additional work to ensure the accuracy of their detection.

“We went after a hard target with a small telescope that was not even optimized to make science detections – and we got it, even if just barely,” said Mary Knapp, the ASTERIA project scientist at MIT’s Haystack Observatory and lead author of the study. “I think this paper validates the concept that motivated the ASTERIA mission: that small spacecraft can contribute something to astrophysics and astronomy.”

While it would be impossible to pack all the capabilities of a larger exoplanet-hunting spacecraft like NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) into a CubeSat, the ASTERIA team envisions these petite packages playing a supporting role for them. Small satellites, with fewer demands on their time, could be used to monitor a star for long periods in hopes of detecting an undiscovered planet. Or, after a large observatory discovers a planet transiting its star, a small satellite could watch for subsequent transits, freeing up the larger telescope to do work smaller satellites can’t. 

Astrophysicist Sara Seager, principal investigator for ASTERIA at MIT, was recently awarded a NASA Astrophysics Science SmallSat Studies grant to develop a mission concept for a follow-on to ASTERIA. The proposal describes a constellation of six satellites about twice as big as ASTERIA that would search for exoplanets similar in size to Earth around nearby Sun-like stars. 

Thinking Small 

To build the smallest planet-hunting satellite in history, the ASTERIA wasn’t simply shrinking hardware used on larger spacecraft. In many cases, they had to take a more innovative approach. For example, the MOST satellite used a camera with a charge-coupled device (CCD) detector, which is common for space satellites; ASTERIA, on the other hand, was equipped with a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) detector — a well-established technology typically used for making precision measurements of brightness in infrared light, not visible light. ASTERIA’s CMOS-based, visible-light camera provided multiple advantages over a CCD. One big one: It helped keep ASTERIA small because it operated at room temperature, eliminating the need for the large cooling system that a cold-operating CCD would require. 

“This mission has mostly been about learning,” said Akshata Krishnamurthy, co-investigator and science data analysis co-lead for ASTERIA at JPL. “We’ve discovered so many things that future small satellites will be able to do better because we demonstrated the technology and capabilities first. I think we’ve opened doors.” 

ASTERIA was developed under JPL’s Phaeton program, which provided early-career hires, under the guidance of experienced mentors, with the challenges of a flight project. ASTERIA is a collaboration with MIT in Cambridge; MIT’s Sara Seager is principal investigator on the project. Brice Demory of the University of Bern also contributed to the new study. The project’s extended missions were partially funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.

Momentus and OrbAstro Ink a Launch Contract

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Momentus and OrbAstro have announced a launch contract to fly a 3U smallsat to SSO onboard the SpaceX Dedicated rideshare mission in 2021.

This on-orbit demonstration mission on a 3U OrbAstro platform will host a variety of payloads:

  • An Ultrascale+ based onboard computer, 10X more powerful than the current state-of-the-art in Zynq 7030 based systems, coupled to an Artificial Neural Network based constellation management system
  • An Electrical Power System with a novel battery chemistry, allowing typically a 5X increase in mission lifetime compared to conventional Li-ion chemistries for a given volume and mass
  • A compact ADCS allowing for fast steering and accurate pointing, tailored for precision formation-flight A new type of thermal management system, allowing kW-class payloads to operate on smallsat-class platforms at a compelling duty cycle

 

Smallsat flocking is relevant to existing and emerging markets in newspace. OrbAstro believes there is much needed room for improvement in constellation-level efficiency, so the new company is developing the onboard hardware and software to close the gap. The company is focused on launching its own flocks as well as innovating in hardware and software for space.

Dr. Ash Dove-Jay, Founder and CEO, OrbAstro, said allowing this IOD, the company expects to launch a small cluster of formation-flying nanosatellites to de-risk all remaining technologies under development before scaling up to the company’s constellation aspirations. Momentus is an ideal partner going forward.

Mikhail Kokorich, CEO of Momentus, added that in the future, this may enable Momentus to do rendezvous and proximity ops for refueling, satellite servicing, repositioning and more.

A graduate of the prestigious Y Combinator program, and based in Santa Clara, California, Momentus announced a $25.5 million Series A raised last year, bringing total funding to nearly $50 million. Momentus employs new and proprietary technologies, including water plasma propulsion, to enable low cost orbital shuttle and charter services. The prototype of the Vigoride vehicle, “El Camino Real”, was launched and tested last year. The first full-scale Vigoride test mission is planned for Q4 of 2020 on the SpaceX dedicated rideshare mission.

 

Telesat’s Phase 1 LEO Satellite is Put to the Test by Telefónica

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Artistic rendition of the Telesat Phase 1 LEO smallsat.
Image is courtesy of Surrey Satellite Technology.

Telesat and Telefónica International Wholesale Services (TIWS) have completed live, on-orbit testing across a wide range of applications on Telesat’s LEO Phase 1 satellite.

With a mission to increase agility and improve operational efficiencies, TIWS partnered with Telesat on a rigorous testing campaign to explore the performance and feasibility of leveraging LEO satellites for high-end services. Testing demonstrated that Telesat LEO could be a viable option for wireless backhaul and presents a substantial improvement in performance over geostationary orbit (GEO) links, without the use of compression or TCP acceleration techniques that are typically required in 650ms latency GEO environments.

Applications tested over Telesat LEO resulted in observed round trip latency of 30-60 msec without any packet loss.  Test scenarios included:

  • High definition video streaming, without interruption
  • Video conference with teams, demonstrating consistent fluidity of movement and voice transmission with user experience matching terrestrial and cellular connections
  • Remote desktop connection to seamlessly manage a remote computer
  • VPN connection without any delay or outages
  • FTP encrypted file transfers of 2 GB in both directions. IPSec tunnel encryption with no reduction in the performance of the link

 

Gustavo Arditti, TIWS Satellite Business Unit Director, said that the company is eager to explore how cutting-edge technologies, such as Telesat LEO, can integrate with the firm’s global connectivity infrastructure. Across every application tested, Telesat LEO delivered an outstanding performance, with significant improvements over what TIWS can achieve via GEO satellites today.

Erwin Hudson, VP, Telesat LEO Network, added that the ability to demonstrate fiber-like performance via satellite across a number of applications that perform poorly on GEO satellite backhaul is a testament to the capabilities of the Telesat LEO network. With its high-throughput links, ultra-low latency, and disruptive economics, Telesat LEO offers an unparalleled value proposition to expand the reach of 4G and 5G networks.

Astroscale U.S. to Build Astroscale Israel Ltd.

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Astroscale U.S. Inc., the U.S. unit of Astroscale Holdings Inc., the market leader in securing long-term orbital sustainability, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the intellectual property and other assets and to hire certain members of the staff of Effective Space Solutions R&D Ltd. (“ESS”), an Israeli satellite life-extension and servicing company.

These moves make Astroscale the only company solely dedicated to on-orbit services across LEO and geostationary GEO orbits and bring the company closer to realizing its vision of orbital sustainability for future generations. The closing of the transaction is contingent upon receipt of certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Astroscale U.S. has created a new subsidiary, Astroscale Israel Ltd., which, upon closing of the transaction, will be staffed by former ESS employees and headquartered in Tel Aviv. Astroscale U.S. will focus on meeting clients’ satellite servicing needs, including those of the U.S. government. Astroscale Israel will serve as the company’s satellite servicing research and payload development group for life extension of GEO satellites, which provide critical communications, navigation and national security services.

ESS has developed some of the most promising and novel on-orbit servicing technologies in the market and has deep experience designing complex GEO missions and programs. Its Space Drone program, which will evolve into an Astroscale U.S. life-extension platform, has been widely acknowledged by leading satellite operators — including prospective customers Astroscale U.S. is in discussions with — as a cost effective, innovative and compatible solution for satellite servicing.

Independent valuations estimate that life extension and other on-orbit satellite services will generate more than $4 billion in revenues by 2028. GEO satellites often cost well over $200 million to deploy, underscoring the value of servicing, repairing or upgrading such satellites rather than just replacing them.

In preparation for supporting this nascent market, Astroscale Holdings recently announced a Series E funding round to support life extension missions. I-NET CORP., a leading Japanese data center provider, became the first investor in this new round, which is expected to remain open through the end of 2020. Astroscale has raised a total of US$140 million in its previous four funding rounds, and this new raise will enhance the company’s already strong portfolio of on-orbit services for space debris mitigation.

Ron Lopez, President and Managing Director of Astroscale U.S., said imagine if rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars to replace a GEO satellite, you could affordably extend the life of that satellite in orbit — that is the opportunity the company welcomes today with these outstanding new colleagues and capabilities. Astroscale is known for blazing trails in on-orbit debris-removal services in LEO, and now Astroscale U.S. will do the same for satellite life extension in GEO. The company is eager to start serving commercial operators, the U.S. government and partner governments around the world, all as a proud part of the U.S. space community.

Arie Halsband, Founder and CEO of ESS, remarked that the remarkable engineering team has been pioneering the on-orbit servicing market for the past several years. The company shares with Astroscale a similar vision and strategy for how this technology and platform could become a logistical solution for commercial and government GEO satellites, and beyond.

Nobu Okada, Founder & CEO of Astroscale, noted the world now relies on space-based services, and the COVID-19 pandemic only intensifies that reliance. The purpose at Astroscale is to enable space sustainability, and satellite life extension represents a massive leap in the firm’s ability to fulfill that purpose.

Astrobotic Gains a NASA SBIR Phase II Award for Spacecraft Nav System

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NASA has selected Astrobotic for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II award to continue the firm’s development of UltraNav, a low-cost, autonomous, visual navigation system for spacecraft.

The system has wide-ranging applications, from the servicing of Earth satellites to journeys to challenging space destinations, such as the lunar poles or Martian mountains. UltraNav, short for Ultra-Compact Standalone Visual Relative Navigation, consists of a high-quality compact camera with a built-in computer carrying a proven suite of accelerated computer vision algorithms.

The system is optimized for space applications such as rendezvous and docking, precision planetary landing, and autonomous rover navigation. It can be packaged as a stand-alone sensor or part of a larger navigation system, customized with mission-specific algorithms, and integrated with a wide variety of spacecraft types, from smallsats all the way up to large human landers.

The visual navigation provided by UltraNav is critical for modern spacecraft operating at destinations beyond the reach of GPS, such as the Moon and deep space. In these settings, vision-based techniques can be used instead of GPS to accurately pinpoint a spacecraft’s location.

Even when GPS is available, visual navigation can ensure safety in critical maneuvers, such as those in the vicinity of other spacecraft. UltraNav performs visual navigation by taking pictures of the spacecraft’s surroundings, which may include a neighboring spacecraft or a planetary surface. Its algorithms then recognize features in those images and match them to preloaded maps with known dimensions. This in turn is used to calculate the spacecraft’s location relative to those features. As the spacecraft moves, so do the positions of the features in the images, enabling tracking of the spacecraft’s motion.

UltraNav is designed with a small size, weight, power consumption, and cost for the purpose of making advanced visual navigation and perception accessible to the broader commercial and low-budget space mission market. Traditionally, spacecraft with visual sensors require costly development to integrate disparate cameras, computers, and image processing software, limiting the use of these advanced technologies primarily to high-budget, flagship missions.

In addition to selling or licensing UltraNav to other spacecraft developers and companies, Astrobotic will use the technology for the firm’s own upcoming missions and vehicles, such as precision landing for its Peregrine lunar lander and visual navigation for its CubeRover and Polaris rovers.

Astrobotic’s UltraNav contract, valued at $750,000 over two years, is part of the NASA SBIR program’s annual investment in U.S. small businesses with promising new technologies whose benefits are strongly aligned with NASA’s future goals. The award will enable Astrobotic to continue and build upon the successful work performed on UltraNav under its prior NASA SBIR Phase I contract.

Chris Owens, Principal Investigator, said UltraNav builds on Astrobotic’s prior work developing inexpensive, reliable, and easy-to-use visual navigation tools, and demonstrates the company’s expertise in navigation and landing in GPS-denied applications. With the help of NASA SBIR funding, Astrobotic will continue to develop a compact visual space navigation system for use by smallsats, lunar landers, and surface rovers.

 

Another Successful SpaceX Starlink Sortie Sling into Space

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A reusability record has now been set by SpaceX for the firm’s Falcon 9 booster with this latest, successful launch of 60 Starlink satellites — quite appropriate, considering that June 4 is the 10th anniversary of the Falcon 9 rocket’s first flight by the company.

There are now 482 Starlinks on-orbit in LEO (that number includes two satellite prototypes that were slotted into space in early 2018).

This bevy of smallsats also contains one satellite that will be testing new tech that will decrease the satellite’s visibility at night on Earth by blocking the sun from reflecting off the spacecraft’s comms antenna surfaces. If this reflectivity mitigation proves to be viable, SpaceX plans to then incorporate this advance into future Starlink satellites.

Still a wonderment, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage completed a perfect landing… a new fifth landing record for this first stage aboard the ocean-based barge “Just Read the Instructions.” The company’s “Ms. Tree” and “Ms. Chief” vessels will also attempt to recover the mission’s two payload fairing halves – to date, three have been successfully recycled.

The liftoff occurred at 9:25 p.m., EDT, from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 and this was the eighth mission in SpaceX’s Starlink project. According to company CEO, Elon Musk, minimal internet coverage will require at least 400 Starlings on-orbit and 800 for moderate coverage. The firm hopes their service could be initiated later this year.

Upcoming plans for SpaceX will find the company scheduling two missions this June that will include additional Starlink satellites as well as a U.S. Space Force GPS satellite.

Arianespace Ramps Up for Vega’s Big, Small Spacecraft Mission and the ‘Ride-share’ of 53 Small Satellites

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Arianespace personnel are utilizing smart glasses during certain payload checkout activities for Flight VV16 at the Spaceport in French Guiana, enabling customers to remotely monitor operations performed on satellites that will be orbited this month by the Vega light-lift launcher.

 

While preparations for the upcoming Vega launch were put on hold due to the Corona virus, Arianespace has now once again resumed activities for the next mission, which will be the proof-of-concept flight with the Vega launcher’s “ride-share” configuration — known as the Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS).

Scheduled for the middle of June from the Spaceport in French Guiana, it will loft 53 micro- and nanosatellites for the benefit of 21 customers, deploying these payloads into Sun-Synchronous orbit.

For the mission, designated Flight VV16 in Arianespace’s launcher family numbering system, Vega will carry seven microsatellites weighing from 15 kg. to 150 kg., along with 46 smaller CubeSats. These spacecraft are to serve various applications, including Earth observation, telecommunications, science, technology and education.

The maiden flight for Europe’s SSMS

Avio, the Italian company that is production prime contractor for Vega launch vehicles, also developed the SSMS ride-share concept. Design authority for the multi-payload dispenser system is SAB Aerospace, an independent Italian SME (small/medium enterprise).

The SSMS program, initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA) with the European Commission’s contribution, will further Arianespace’s ability to offer ride-share solutions tailored for the growing small satellite market.

The SSMS dispenser is composed of modular components that are assembled as needed to serve as the interface with grouped payloads composed of microsatellites and CubeSats. Capable of accepting a full range of payload combinations, the SSMS configuration has been designed to be as responsive as possible in meeting the launch service market’s needs for both institutional and commercial customers.

 


Avio members of the launch team for Arianespace Flight VV16 were flown from Rome to Cayenne aboard a chartered jetliner.

Launch team members arrive from Europe

Assembly of Flight VV16’s light-lift Vega launcher was performed during February on the Spaceport’s SLV launch pad, but was followed in mid-March by an operations stand-down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to fully implement sanitary protective measures.

With the decision to restart operational activities at the Spaceport, a team of some 70 people — led by engineers and technicians from Avio, and including personnel from other companies — was flown aboard a chartered jetliner from Europe to French Guiana.

After arriving at Félix Eboué Airport near the capital city of Cayenne, the team members underwent a quarantine period before being authorized to work at the launch site.

Thierry Wilmart, who heads the Missions & Customers Department at Arianespace said that they are delighted to have resumed operations. Protective measures relating to COVID-19 have been taken throughout the launch site’s facilities, and mission personnel have received instructions on respecting the sanitary guidelines.

Wilmart noted that among the first activities was an evaluation of using smart glasses during payload preparation activities with several of the spacecraft passengers on Flight VV16. Adding that the results are very positive, and this efficient means of being connected enables customers to remotely monitor operations conducted by Arianespace personnel on their satellites.


The Vega launcher for Arianespace Flight VV16 is shown taking shape during integration activity at the Spaceport in February. This photo sequence shows the solid propellant stages being “stacked” at the Vega Launch Complex (SLV), with the Zefiro 23 second stage’s integration on the P80 first stage (at left), followed by installation of the Zefiro 9 third stage atop them (center). In the photo at right, Vega receives its liquid-propellant Attitude and Vernier Upper Module (AVUM).

 

Forrester Reports: SES Actions  + Intelsat’s Request to the Bankruptcy Court

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Chris Forrester

SES, as largely expected under the company’s ‘Simplify and Amplify’ cost-savings program, is to restructure their global operations. As part of the scheme, the company will consolidate many of their European offices into its Luxembourg HQ according to journalist Chris Forrester‘s article at the Advanced Television infosite.

SES plans to close its offices in Brussels, central London, the Isle of Man, Warsaw and Zurich – redistributing activities in these locations to other offices in Kiev, Stockholm, Stockley Park in London and The Hague as well as its headquarters in Luxembourg.

An SES statement said, “In addition to consolidating SES’s global footprint and streamlining operating functions, other restructuring and delayering is underway including the removal of numerous open positions. SES has launched a compelling voluntary phased retirement program and is retraining and realigning resources internally towards high-value future market opportunities and to bolster its position in cloud, mobility and other emerging verticals. In aggregate, these changes will impact between 10 and 15 percent of its global employee base. Given that a number of these changes will impact employees in Luxembourg, SES has engaged its personnel representatives to discuss the implementation of a social plan.”


Steve Collar

Steve Collar, the CEO of SES, said, “In this rapidly evolving market, it is important that SES remains an agile business partner for our customers. ‘Simplify & Amplify’ is a transformational undertaking that will streamline our business, drive collaboration, and improve efficiency. We are making these changes thoughtfully, ensuring that, wherever possible, we redeploy our talent within the company and minimize the impact to our global workforce while enhancing our ability to support and serve our global customer base.”

Chris also added the following news that SES currently has two core deployments of satellites: It has a fleet of powerful geostationary satellites that just about serves the whole planet as well as 20, O3b (‘the Other 3 Billion’) satellites in MEO, with seven new ‘super-power’ O3b satellites on order from Boeing, with their deployment to start in 2021.


Artistic rendition of the SES O3b constellation.
Image is courtesy of SES.

The O3b fleet is responsible for much of SES ‘Networks’ division and SES has said that this is likely to be spun off into a new business.

Now, in common with Viasat, Telesat and even OneWeb, SES is looking to expand its O3b division dramatically with extra orbiting assets. SES already has FCC permission to expand beyond the existing (20 existing + seven new) O3b satellites. Back in 2018, the FCC approved a planned framework expansion to triple its O3b mPOWER fleet by giving it US market access for another 22 high-powered satellites, seven of which are already in construction and scheduled for launch beginning in 2021.

An SES spokesperson said, “We have always said the first seven satellites announced for O3b mPOWER is just the beginning, much as it was with O3b where our initial order was eight. The filing reaffirms our belief in MEO as a fantastic orbit from which we deliver high-end customer solutions underscored by the recent O3b mPOWER customer announcements and our proven success with our existing O3b constellation.”

SES is now proposing a fleet of new LEO satellites. The firm’s May 26th formal filing to the FCC asks for some key modifications including:

  • 10 satellites at 8062 kms in equatorial orbits
  • 24 satellites in inclined orbits at 8062 kms
  • 36 satellites in inclined orbits at 507 kms

 

There are no dates supplied as to when the LEO fleet might happen. Indeed, the FCC filing does not obligate SES/O3b to proceed with the plan, but there are US government funds in the offing and a total of nine businesses have made FCC filings ahead of the May 26th deadline for potential spectrum allocations, including SES, Viasat, OneWeb, Telesat, Kepler, SpaceX and others.

The SES application stated, “The proposed expansion will allow O3b to respond to growing demand from Internet service providers, fixed and mobile network operators, large enterprises and governments for low-latency, high-throughput satellite capacity that enables fast, flexible and affordable broadband connectivity in locations unserved or underserved by terrestrial networks. Grant of this Modification will allow O3b to build on its proven record of meeting customer requirements for high-quality, cost-effective satellite services and will therefore serve the public interest.
     “The new satellites will also be equipped with the ability to perform satellite-to-satellite communications. O3b’s LEO satellites will use the 27.5-29.1 GHz and 29.5-30 GHz FSS spectrum to transmit to O3b’s MEO satellites and to geostationary satellite orbit (GSO) space stations. The O3b MEO satellites will use the 17.8-18.6 GHz and 18.8-20.2 GHz FSS and MSS feeder link spectrum to transmit to O3b’s LEO satellites, and the LEO satellites will receive transmissions in these bands from GSO space stations as well. This functionality will enhance the overall network’s ability to support innovative offerings that use a combination of space station assets to satisfy developing customer needs.”

Also at the Advanced Television infosite is information that, last October, Intelsat made a $50 million “synergistic” loan to BlackSky, owned by Spaceflight Industries. Now the company wants the Court to amend the loan obligations and permit certain sales plans to proceed despite the bankruptcy.

Spaceflight describes itself as a ‘next generation’ space company with launch facilities, and its BlackSky division specializes in images from space, industrial IoT and event monitoring. BlackSky wants a constellation of 60 EO satellites. Four are already orbiting and a further 6 are expected to launch later this year.


Artistic rendition of a BlackSky smallsat on-orbit.
Image is courtesy of the company.

Japan-based conglomerate Mitsui & Co loaned a separate $26 million to Spaceflight on October 31st 2019. Earlier this year Mitsui joined with transport and logistics business Yamasa to buy Spaceflight Industries in a 50/50 joint-venture.

Spaceflight had expected the sale of its “Industries” division to Mitsui to wrap in Q2 this year, and the deal has already been cleared by certain US regulators. Intelsat told the Court that the sale of Spaceflight’s launch business is ready to close subject to the Court’s approval.

Spaceflight owes cash to LeoStella, a joint-venture between Spaceflight and Thales Alenia Space.

Intelsat’s filing to the court said, “The Spaceflight Loan Agreement requires that proceeds from the Launch Business Sale would first be used to repay any outstanding amounts owed on the Mitsui Loan, after which excess proceeds would be used to repay overdue amounts owed to Leostella LCC, a satellite manufacturing joint venture (the “Joint Venture”) in which Industries owns a 50 percent interest.  Thales Alenia Space France owns the remaining 50 percent interest in the Joint Venture.”