Archives for September 2020

Exolaunch is arranging the launch and providing technical mission management for four of Spire Global’s Lemur-class 3U cubesats aboard a Soyuz rocket mission scheduled for September 28.

Spire Global operates the world’s largest commercial constellation of smallsats making radio occultation measurements, alongside other Earth Observations (EO) that serve the maritime, weather and aviation industries.

To date, Spire has launched more than 100 satellites that operate across a broad range of orbits. Exolaunch has helped deploy approximately one-third of Spire’s satellite constellation since 2016 when the launch service partnership started between the companies. The ongoing cooperation between Exolaunch and Spire has become a cornerstone for pioneering the latest advancements in small satellite launch systems and services.

As it has done on previous rideshares, Exolaunch will arrange launch services and mission technical support for Spire using its advanced cubesat deployment system, the 12U EXOpod. It will also utilize the EXObox deployment sequencer to control the safe and precise separation of Spire’s satellites.

The Spire satellite launch is part of a September Soyuz rideshare mission that is manifested by Exolaunch to realize the launch plans of its international small satellite customers. The mission is named Wanderlust, Desire to Travel, which symbolizes both the ever-increasing importance of sustainable access to space for smallsats and longing for travel that was recently restricted. 

Executive Comments

“Our long-time partnership with Spire has been extraordinarily valuable not only in driving Exolaunch to continually refine its solutions, but also in helping to propel the smallsat and space industry to new heights,” said Jeanne Medvedeva, Exolaunch VP of Launch Services. “We look forward to supporting Spire on this latest rideshare launch and stand ready to facilitate the ongoing expansion of their satellite constellation.”

“The experience and comfort we have working with the Exolaunch team has enabled Spire to continue with this launch campaign despite the challenges of a global pandemic. The combination of Exolaunch’s trusted deployment hardware, launch expertise, and customer focus has made them one of our more trusted launch partners,” said Robert Sproles, Senior Director, Constellation Planning and Operations at Spire. “Exolaunch has been instrumental in enabling Spire to set the industry-standard in the commercial aerospace sector as we work with our customers to tackle ever more frequent and extreme weather events in this era of Climate Change.”

Exolaunch has excellent heritage flying international customers on Soyuz, having launched more than 85 smallsats on Soyuz missions to date. This mission marks Exolaunch’s 7th with Soyuz. On this mission, Exolaunch will deploy a cluster of 15 smallsats into a sun-synchronous orbit for its customers Kepler Communications, the UAE Space Agency, the Würzburg Center for Telematics, the Technische Universität Berlin and several European commercial companies. The company is set to provide its market-leading separation systems – EXOpod for cubesats and CarboNIX for microsats – as well as its EXObox sequencers, to ensure timely deployment of smallsats into their target orbit. 

Arianespace’s multi-million euros contract from OneWeb (currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reconstruction) has been heavily revised.

OneWeb wants 3 less rocket launches. Each will carry 34 to 36 OneWeb satellites and the full OneWeb constellation should be in orbit by the end of 2022.

The new launch manifest will see Arianespace carry out 16 launches on its Europeanized Soyuz rockets. This means that two Soyuz launches have been cancelled and also that OneWeb is no longer the debut customer on the new Ariane 6 rocket.

Arianespace’s Soyuz vehicle has already successfully placed 3 batches of OneWeb satellites into orbit; however, the bankruptcy brought all plans to a halt. The original scheme expected one Soyuz rocket launch to happen every month throughout 2021 and building up to a fleet of some 650 satellites.

Just 74 craft are currently in orbit and Arianespace has said the launch manifest will kick back in during December of this year, with 36 satellites on board.

The current plan will see two Soyuz launches managed at Arianespace’s usual Kourou, French Guiana launch site. Other Soyuz launches will happen from either Baikonur or Russia’s new launch facility at Vostochny in Russia’s Far East.

Prior the bankruptcy, OneWeb had contracts in place with Virgin Orbit but they have been cancelled and are the subject of a legal action between Virgin and OneWeb.

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy reconstruction allows the affected business to accept or reject some of the contracts and leases that were in place prior to the bankruptcy.

OneWeb has delivered to its bankruptcy court a long list of contracts, some it will be happy to respect or amend but others it wants to be rejected. The court will decide and those affected by a ‘rejection’ have until September 28th to lodge their protests. The bankruptcy court will hear arguments on October 2nd.

The list of the proposed rejected contracts is long, and includes Airbus Defence & Space, EchoStar as well as Hughes Network Systems, a Will-i-Am business (I.am.equity), Intelsat, Kymeta Corp, Qualcomm, Coca-Cola, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Orbit, Deloitte, KPMG, Qualcomm and many others, including SoftBank.

Some OneWeb staffers and former employees are also affected. Greg Wyler via his Nevada-based 1110 Ventures LLC company and who founded the company, as well as Brian Holz, who worked for a time at OneWeb and who will lose a share purchase agreement signed in 2017.

There are also some major legal actions against OneWeb including claims by Intelsat and Virgin Orbit. The bankruptcy court’s judge will decide what happens to these later this year.

News stories authored by journalist Chris Forrester,
who posts for the Advanced Television infosite and is also a
Senior Contributor for Satnews Publishers.

On Thursday, September 24, the Spanish optical Earth Observation (EO) satellite SEOSAT/INGENIO will begin its journey from Torrejón air base in Madrid (Spain) to Kourou for an Arianespace launch on a Vega rocket.

SEOSAT, acronym for Spanish Earth Observation Satellite, is a high resolution, optical satellite devoted to civil use, to be placed in orbit at an altitude of 670 kilometers with a launch scheduled on November 18, 2020.

SEOSAT/INGENIO is a project of the Ministry of Science and Innovation within Spain’s national strategy, led by delegation by the CDTI (Center for Industrial Technological Development), which also assumes the cost of the project. This satellite is an integral part of Spain’s National Satellite Earth Observation Program (PNOTS) together with PAZ, a SAR radar satellite in orbit since February 2018.

SEOSAT/INGENIO represents one of the largest projects undertaken by the Spanish industry: the satellite has been built by an industrial consortium comprising 11 Spanish companies, with Airbus as prime contractor of the program, SENER Aeroespacial as prime contractor of the optical instrument and Thales Alenia Space in Spain as supplier of all the electronics of the instrument and the satellite communication systems. Thanks to the coordinated effort of all the companies involved, the construction of the satellite has been successfully completed, with the assembly of all the units in Madrid.

SEOSAT/INGENIO will provide high resolution images to different civil, institutional and governmental users. Its main observation areas will be the Spanish territory, Europe, Latin America and North Africa, as well as the general areas defined by European users in the frame of Copernicus and GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems). The information delivered by SEOSAT/INGENIO will have application in cartography, land management, coastal surveillance, water resources management, agricultural monitoring, precision agriculture, environmental control and crisis management (security and emergencies) in catastrophes.

The satellite consists of a platform embarking a primary payload, a high-resolution, high-performance optical instrument with an image capacity of 2.5 million km2/day and up to 600 images per day. Led by SENER Aeroespacial, and with electronics contribution of Thales Alenia Space, this instrument is designed to take terrestrial images in two channels, one panchromatic (PAN) and the other multi-spectral, which in turn is made up of four bands (blue, green, red and near infrared).

As the instrument prime contractor (see video), SENER Aeroespacial has been responsible for its conception, architectural design, manufacture, integration, alignment and verification: of the detailed optical, opto-mechanical and thermal design; of the integral management of the project, engineering coordination, quality control, and management of integration and tests activities; and the management of subcontractors and suppliers.

In addition, SENER Aeroespacial has been supported by Thales Alenia Space for the functional and optical quality validation of the instrument and the verification of the instrument qualification.

The configuration consists of two identical cameras, complementary aligned in order to acquire altogether the 55 km trace needed to fulfill the mission objectives, working in sweep or pushbroom mode. The primary payload provides a native image with ground pixel resolution of 2.5 m in the panchromatic channel and 10 m in the multi-spectral bands.

The instrument achieves very high image quality and very good radiometric quality performances and weighs 130 kg and has an approximate volume of 1.5m x 1.5m x 1m.

Thales Alenia Space in Spain drew on its expertise in the field of high-resolution optical technologies to design, manufacture, integrate, test and deliver all electronics for SEOSAT/INGENIO observation instrument. The payload electronics guarantee the correct operation of the cameras, as well as the power supply, data acquisition and transmission, and thermal control. It plays a vital role in the success of this mission, since the equipment must be able to process the electronic signals that carry the image information at extremely high speed and without any degradation.

Once it enters into service, SEOSAT/INGENIO optical images will complement the radar images that Paz has provided since it started operations. In this way, Spain will have a dual satellite system, made up of an optical and a radar platform, whose data can be combined to offer higher resolution and enhanced information on the Earth’s surface.

Executive Comments

Diego Rodríguez, Director of Space of SENER Aeroespacial, expressed the relevance of this mission for Spain and thanked the CDTI and Airbus for the trust placed in SENER Aeroespacial for the development of such a specific and vital technology for the mission. He said, “With SEOSAT/INGENIO, SENER Aeroespacial has developed the capacity to deal with this type of instrument, which is available to very few companies in Europe and the world.”

Eduardo Bellido, CEO of Thales Alenia Space in Spain, added, “We are proud to have contributed to the design of this satellite and to the instrument consecution, which is a milestone for Spain in the field of Earth observation. We would like to thank the CDTI and our industrial partners for calling on our proven expertise in communications systems and optical equipment, to provide new observation services to Spanish civil, institutional and government users. This success reinforces the positioning of our site in Madrid as a European centre of excellence in optical instruments and supports the expansion of our activities in the field of Earth Observation and science instruments.”

NSLComm has selected York Space Systems LLC to produce small, agile satellite platforms with high throughput communication payload capabilities for coverage in the U.S.

NSLComm, a company co-founded by CEO Raz Itzhaki and Chief Engineer Daniel Rockberger, selected York to develop full satellite systems of nano- to mid-class ESPA-size satellites with advanced communication capabilities at high frequencies to provide high throughput and IoT applications. The satellites will offer capabilities in the realm of connectivity, backhauling, IoT applications and more.

NSLComm has a history of developing patented technology that reduces the cost of communications and greatly enhances link bandwidth, enabling one gigabit per second of communications from smallsats. NSLComm’s communication solution entails key components such as an expandable antenna that is deployed in space and a flexible sub reflector that compensates for any reflector shapes.

York Space Systems has a strong track record of building and operating small satellites and is currently engaged in spacecraft assembly, integration, and servicing. It is also expanding rapidly and recently unveiled a manufacturing facility in Denver, Colorado that is three times the size of its previous plant.

NSLComm is poised to offer this unique platform to both commercial and government customers in the United States and globally. The two companies have established technical working groups to design the communication interfaces between York’s S-CLASS bus and NSLComm’s Ka band communication payload and are now approaching potential customers.

Executive Comments

“We selected York because it can offer compact and highly capable systems that are naturally combined,” Rockberger added.

Michael Lajczok, York’s VP of Mission Solutions, stated, “Through a combination of our S-CLASS bus and NSLComm’s state of the art communications technology, we believe our satellites will fill the need for faster satellite communications around the world.”

Momentus Inc. (“Momentus” or the “Company”) and Pixxel have executed a service agreement for delivering Pixxel’s second smallsat to SSO orbit in December 2021 onboard a SpaceX Falcon-9 launch, as well as options to fly again in 2022.

Pixxel is building a constellation of Earth imaging smallsats that can provide real-time remote sensing data across the world. The Momentus Shuttle Service will provide a rideshare for multiple Pixxel spacecraft to predefined orbits.

Founded in 2019 by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, Pixxel satellites will help make the world a more sustainable place through highly accurate data-based insights in agriculture, climate change, forestry and other domains, according to the firm. Pixxel recently raised $5 million in funding, which the company is using to rapidly build and launch the second satellite with Momentus’ help.

Momentus has gained significant traction since its founding in 2017, attracting dozens of customers ranging from private commercial space companies to the likes of Lockheed Martin and NASA, and penning important industry partnerships, most notably with SpaceX.

Momentus employs new and proprietary technologies, including water plasma propulsion, to enable revolutionary, low-cost, orbital Shuttle and Charter services. The Charter Service will allow dedicated capacity to be allocated to a single customer’s payload. In the Shuttle Service model, the payload will be a rideshare along with other payloads hosted or deployed from the Vigoride transfer vehicle.

Executive Comments

Awais Ahmed, Pixxel’s CEO, said, “We are excited to partner with Momentus to get our satellites up in orbit as soon as we can and get the data in the hands of our customers. Momentus’ launch and in-space transfer services provide us with the flexibility to get to the orbit we want, even on a rideshare mission. We look forward to working with them to help make space more accessible.”

“Pixxel is doing something innovative that hasn’t been done in India or the West,” said Mikhail Kokorich, CEO of Momentus. “With a shared belief in humanity’s expansion in space via in-situ resources, we wish this mission the ultimate success.”

Additionally, Momentus and GP Advanced Projects have engaged in a launch service agreement for GP Advanced Projects FEES2 smallsat to fly on Vigoride’s second demo mission in April of 2021.

The Flexible Experimental Embedded Satellite (FEES) is a demonstrator of a low-cost, picosatellite platform for autonomous on-orbit validation and testing. A first model will fly onboard G.A.U.S.S. Unisat-7 satellite launched on a Soyuz and Momentus will fly the enhanced FEES2 variant on a Vigoride shuttle via a Falcon 9 rocket in the first half of 2021.

These two FEES satellites will pave the way for future constellations of picosatellites devoted to the retrieval of IoT data from ground, starting with a first Cluster mission in 2022 – also partnered with Momentus.

San Francisco Bay area-based, but with a strong commitment to European markets, this represents the second deal with an innovative Italian upstart, following the agreement with ARCA Dynamics and NPC Spacemind in August, for a mission on which GP Advanced Projects is also onboard with the same miniaturized electronics, providing OBC and Telecommunications.

Executive Comments

“GP Advanced Projects is doing a tremendous effort to validate its core technology in space, after having successfully achieved on-ground qualification. The partnership with Momentus and the flexibility of the Vigoride shuttle allow us not only to increase the reliability of our platform by performing a second validation mission, but offer us also the possibility to test additional features ahead of schedule with respect to our development roadmap,” said Guido Parissenti, CEO of GP Advanced Projects.

“This deal confirms the ability of Momentus Vigoride shuttle service to offer affordable access to space for even the smallest satellite form factors. Together with the advancements in miniaturization of electronics brought forward by GP Advanced Projects, our transportation system unlocks a whole new range of constellation services to take off the ground – literally,” said Mikhail Kokorich, CEO of Momentus.

B

Getting back to their original plans are Arianespace and OneWeb which will resume launch operations to continue the deployment of the OneWeb constellation.

According to the amended launch contract with OneWeb, the London-based communications company, Arianespace will perform 16 more Soyuz launches from three spaceports (Kourou, Baikonur and Vostochny) beginning in late 2020 and continuing through 2022. These launches will enable OneWeb to complete the deployment of its full global constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites by the end of 2022. The next Soyuz launch is planned as soon as December 2020 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome with 36 satellites on board.

“I am delighted that we are back on track to support the deployment of the OneWeb constellation and the company’s mission to bridge the digital divide at a global scale,” said Stéphane Israël, CEO of Arianespace. “Our teams already are working hard to ensure a smooth and quick restart of the launch campaigns by year-end 2020.”

Arianespace has launched 74 OneWeb satellites to date. The initial six were successfully orbited by Soyuz Flight VS21 from French Guiana on February, 2019. In February and March, 2020, Arianespace and its Starsem affiliate successfully launched 68 OneWeb satellites from Baikonur on Soyuz Flights ST27 and ST28.

OneWeb’s goal is to deliver global connectivity from a network of 650 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that will provide high-bandwidth, low latency communication services to regions previously unconnected.

In addition to the satellites, OneWeb’s global network will include gateway stations located around the world, and a range of user terminals will provide connectivity services for fixed and mobile communications. These terminals will be compatible with the future needs of the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G.

OneWeb Satellites, a joint venture between OneWeb and Airbus Defence and Space, is the constellation’s prime contractor. The OneWeb satellites are built in OneWeb Satellites’ Florida-based series production line that is dedicated to the assembly, integration, and test of OneWeb’s satellites.

Rocket Lab has announced that the company’s next Electron launch will be a rideshare mission to LEO for Planet and Spaceflight Inc.’s customer, Canon Electronics.

The mission – named ‘In Focus’ in a nod to the Earth-imaging satellites onboard – will liftoff in October from Rocket Lab’s private orbital launch site, Launch Complex 1, in New Zealand. The mission will deploy a total of 10 satellites to precise and individual orbits. The mission will be Rocket Lab’s 15th launch overall and fifth mission of 2020, making Electron the second most-frequently launched United States orbital rocket this year.

Earth-imaging company Planet has nine of their latest generation SuperDove satellites booked on the mission for deployment to a 500 km morning-crossing Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO). Each of the nine SuperDoves will be integrated with and deployed from Rocket Lab’s Maxwell dispensers, the industry’s lightest cubesat dispenser in its class.

Planet’s Flock 4e’ of SuperDoves will join the company’s constellation of Earth Observation (EO) satellites already on-orbit providing medium-resolution global coverage and near-daily revisit.

The 10th and final payload aboard this mission, Canon Electronics Inc.’s CE-SAT-IIB, was arranged by satellite rideshare and mission management provider Spaceflight Inc. CE-SAT-IIB is a technical demonstration microsatellite developed by Canon Electronics Inc. It has a middle-size telescope equipped with an ultra-high sensitivity camera to take night images of the Earth and small size telescopes which are suitable for CubeSat use.

Rocket Lab has multiple missions scheduled for the remainder of 2020, including an upcoming launch in Q4 earmarked for the company’s first Electron first stage recovery attempt. The Electron’s first stage will be equipped with new hardware, including a reaction control system and an in-house designed parachute system, to orient the booster during its re-entry descent and slow down the first stage before a soft landing in the ocean where it will be collected by a ship.

Executive Comment

Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck, said the mission demonstrates the industry-leading flexibility Electron provides to small satellite operators by deploying multiple spacecraft to their various target destinations even when flying as part of a rideshare. “With Electron, we designed a launch system that makes access to space easy and puts our customers in the driver’s seat of their missions, and we’re proud to be delivering on that even through times of global disruption.”

NanoAvionics has signed a partnership agreement with Ananth Technologies Ltd. (ATL) — this agreement marks NanoAvionics’ entry into India’s growing NewSpace industry.

The agreement makes Ananth Technologies the official distributor of NanoAvionics’ products and services in India, giving companies one stop access to cost effective small, micro and nano satellites, including subsystems. The local access will save them time and cost for assembly, integration and test of at Ananth’s facilities in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Customers will also have access to low cost launch service, using ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), and post launch operation services. In addition, this partnership between NanoAvionics and Ananth Technologies is going to foster relationships with Indian research institutions and suppliers.

NanoAvionics and Ananth Technology will work together to meet India’s demand for smallsats with the flight-proven NanoAvionics smallsat buses and subsystems. NanoAvionics’ standardized nanosatellite buses satisfy the requirements for a wide range of smallsat applications, thanks to their regular connectivity, powerful and reliable hardware, up to 14U of payload volume and integrated propulsion system. NanoAvionics’s designs provide functions for smallsats that once required much larger spacecraft.

Executive Comments

“Our new partnership with Ananth Technologies opens new doors for NanoAvionics,” NanoAvionics’ CEO Vytenis J. Buzas said. “Ananth Tech is one of the most trusted names in the Indian aerospace sector. Their network, experience and world-class satellite manufacturing facilities will allow us to serve an emerging Indian NewSpace market more effectively. India‘s private space sector is a vibrant community of talented individuals having innovative ideas. I am sure that the recent Indian space policy changes, which just opened up the space sector for private participation, combined with partnerships with international players of the industry, will accelerate the growth and kickstart the birth of more Indian NewSpace stars.”

“The new agreement between Ananth Technology and NanoAvionics will bring mutual benefits while serving the new generation of private space companies in India,” said Anurup Pavuluri, the Director of Ananth Technologies.

Kleos Space S.A. (ASX:KSS, Frankfurt:KS1) has provided an update on the Kleos Scouting Mission, launching on the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) PSLV-C49 Mission from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota Range in India (SHAR).

The Company has been informed (by NSIL via Spaceflight Inc.) that the launch of the four Kleos satellites planned on-board PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle)-C49 mission is being targeted for the 1st half of November 2020, based on the current status of planning of activities. This schedule is subject to change due to operational circumstances beyond NSIL control.

The Company is launching the Scouting satellites under a rideshare contract with Spaceflight Inc., with the launch managed by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), a Government of India company under their Department of Space. The Kleos’ Scouting Mission’s four satellites have been mission-ready since the middle of 2019 and were shipped to the launch site during February of 2020, anticipating the launch during March 2020. Delay to the launch has been due to the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic situation.

As Kleos Space is ready and waiting to launch its KSM satellites, the company was able to seal partnerships allowing for fast commercialization. This week, a Distribution Partner and Data Integrator Agreement has been finalized with Longmont, Colorad,o based AllSource Analysis Inc. (AllSource), a provider of finished, geospatial intelligence. The multi-year agreement allows AllSource to leverage the radio-frequency reconnaissance Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) captured by Kleos to provide its end customers with additional insights for their intelligence requirements.

In due course, NSIL via Spaceflight Inc. will confirm the exact launch date once the activities at the launch base progress successfully.

Executive Comment

Karyn Hayes-Ryan, Kleos Space’s Director, said, “The Kleos business model is to sell our data products through integrators that bring different data sets together with the Kleos RF Geolocation data products, analyzing and adding value to the data before selling a derived product to their customer base. We are very pleased to be working with All Source experts, contributing to their high impact intelligence output.”