Archives for February 2021

At the Capital Market Day of space technology group OHB SE (Prime Standard, ISIN DE0005936124), Augsburg-based start-up Rocket Factory announced the company will boost the growth of the microlauncher company with a financing round.

The current shareholders of Rocket Factory are OHB SE, Apollo Capital Partners, and other founders as well as the company’s management, the employees and private investors. The aim of the financing round is to raise 25 million euros in fresh capital.

Rocket Factory develops microlaunchers for the transport of smallsats into LEO. The start-up is determined to grow strongly in the next few years and quickly conquer market shares.

In the meantime, the start-up has begun building prototypes of its engine. Small and inexpensive launch vehicles play a key role in the commercial use of space by private service providers. New Space is opening up a billion-dollar market that is attracting more and more investors. Venture capital funds worldwide invested a record $15.7 billion in 252 space companies in 2020, of which $9.4 billion went to US companies*.

“We want to build the best and cheapest rockets and microlaunchers. With freight costs of EUR 3 million per launch, we will be able to offer by far the cheapest launch service in the world,” said Hans Steininger, Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board and founding investor of Rocket Factory and owner of Apollo Capital Partners, Munich.

Marco Fuchs, CEO of OHB SE, said: “We do not want to leave this lucrative market to US companies. That is why we have set up the Rocket Factory with two young space enthusiasts and given the new company a major boost in the form of expertise and capital. We will be able to maximise the cost advantages of series production because we will be building rockets just like cars. Due to the very high demand for investment opportunities in this promising market, we are now opening up the possibility for further selected investors to participate in the growth of the Rocket Factory.”

Rocket Factory’s launcher combines three significant competitive advantages: Unbeatable pricing, precise in-orbit delivery through a novel orbital stage and superior engine technology.

“With the staged combustion technology, we are a technological trendsetter because it is more powerful, more efficient and cleaner than most launch vehicles currently on the market,” said Dr. Stefan Brieschenk, Board Member and Chief Operations Officer at Rocket Factory.

Jörn Spurmann, Board Member and Chief Commercial Officer at Rocket Factory, said, “We offer a delivery service for the last mile. Unlike many others, we deliver satellites to different orbits with pinpoint accuracy using our unique orbital stage. This creates cost advantages. And because we also produce at the lowest cost, we create unrivaled value for money.”

*Source: Space Investment Quarterly Q4/2020 by Space Capital

KSF Space Foundation announced that the state of Kuwait will be the first in GCC and North Africa to send a cubesat to near space to measure climate change and ultra violet radiation in partnership with KSF Space’s next mission, scheduled for high altitude balloon launch in June of 2021.

Kuwait College of Science & Technology (KCST) will be the lead across all universities in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) and North Africa (NA) region for this experiment.

The project is locally managed by the KSF Space Officer in Kuwait, Eng. Loai Arnous, along with KSF Space team officers. This is an effort to give KCST students an outlet and experience with the platform that will not to limit the students’ vision and instead “take them to space.”

The mission will be carried on a small space capsule made by KSF Space Foundation. The nose of the capsule will be hosting the bacteria cells in a chamber, while the rest of the capsule will carry 5 smallsats from five countries. This mission will be flying from the UK using a zero pressure space balloon and will reach to near space.

Kuwait College of Science & Technology is collaborating with the KSF Space Foundation, which is a non-profit foundation that was founded to enable cost-efficient access to LEO with zero-environmental impact. The foundation encourages universities to develop R&D missions using smallsats as they have now play an important role in developing future, scientific ,space missions.

The foundation offers space related training, NEP Certification, technology testing for satellites, ozone and climate experiments to stratosphere, and much more, which in turn is of great value for our students. This helps them gain quality hands-on experience and a broad range of live examples for them to test in real life and gain as much knowledge as possible.

Prof. Khalid Al-Begain, KCST President, said, “The KCST & KSF collaboration entails training 12 KCST students, guiding them and recommending the proper hardware that will be needed to build the 3D printed space capsule. The satellite will be conducting research that focuses on stratospheric studies on the Ozone Layer.”

“The purpose of the project is to better understand the reaction of climate change and measuring ultra violet radiation in space. The expected results could prove valuable information for human and science,” said Dr. Kayyali, the Chairman of KSF Space.

Success came to Synspective as it received the first image acquisition from its first own SAR satellite “StriX-α”. This is the first success in Japan that a commercial SAR satellite(100kg class) image has obtained from space.

“StriX-α” was launched by Rocket Lab’s Electron, from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula launch site, on December 15th (JST) and put into the target orbit: at an altitude of 500 km in a Sun Synchronous Orbit (SSO). It has been successfully operated since and the very first imagery was successfully acquired on February 8th. 

SAR images: Observation date and time：February 8th, 2021, around 12:00 (Japan time)

Observation location：South Florida, USA

Future SAR Satellite Constellation

The second demonstration satellite “StriX-β” is scheduled to be launched in 2021. It is aimed to demonstrate “InSAR (Interferometric SAR)” technology in orbit, a special SAR analytics technique to detect millimeter-level displacements on the ground surface.

Synspective aims to build a constellation of six satellites by 2023 and 30 satellites by the late 2020s. With the constellation of 30 satellites in low Earth orbit , it makes it possible to observe the location of disaster occurring anywhere in the world within the time of two hours (with 6 satellites, it is within 24 hours). Synspective is currently developing an automated process that analyzes the observed data, assesses (understand) the situation of the disastered place at the early stage, and provides a solution. By establishing its constellation, Synspective aims to contribute dramatical improvements in the world’s disaster response efforts.

Comment from Dr. Motoyuki Arai, founder and CEO at Synspective, “For a satellite data solution company, the most difficult but the most crucial milestone is the acquisition of data from an own-built satellite. Thanks to many years of hard work, including the ImPACT program, we have just obtained this great achievement. I would like to express our sincere gratitude to our team and am proud to move forward together.

Now, we are proceeding with preparations for data sales. As launching the “StriX-β” within this year, we are planning to release more solution services using our own data. We will ensure to continue producing results in order to create a more efficient and resilient world.”

Comment from Toshihiro Obata, Board Director and General Manager of Satellite System Development Department, “We are very happy that all the efforts of our development team members achieved this successful early demonstration. We continue to give further efforts to improve the quality of image and provide solutions. With partners, we are currently setting up a secure line for our satellite serial productions, by introducing manufacturing and quality control technologies from the non-space industries. We appreciate your further interest in our progress.”

Synspective provides one-stop-solutions using geospatial data from its own SAR satellites, upon its mission to create a progressive world based on real data. The core technology was developed by the ImPACT program led by The Cabinet Office, Government of Japan.  Synspective is building a constellation of its own small SAR satellites and to provide its data and analytic information to governments and commercial outfits.

About StriX-α Development: Synspective applied the technology from Japanese Cabinet Office’s program “ImPACT (Innovative Research and Development Promotion Program)” onto the development of its own small SAR satellite “StriX-α”.

Synspective has successfully developed a small, lightweight, and highly compressed SAR system in collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Hirokawa Laboratory of  School of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology.  Development of the outer part of the satellite “bus” was done with Nakasuka and Funase Laboratory of the University of Tokyo. Keio University’s Shirasaka Laboratory made significant coordinations with various expected users.

This first image acquisition from our in-orbit demonstration was as a result of cooperation from these universities and JAXA’s “J-SPARC” program for utilization of small SAR technology. 

Size / performance: “StriX-α” is a small SAR satellite. Its weight is 100kg class, which is 1/10 of a conventional SAR satellite. The total cost of development and launch can be reduced to 1/20 by making the antenna retractable into 70 square centimeters when launching. Antenna will be deployed to 5 meters length in orbit. Data is observed with VV polarization and it can capture 10 to 30 kilometer width with the resolution of 1 to 3 meters on ground.  Two observation modes are available: strip map and sliding spotlight mode.

The 5th SpaceX Starlink launch via a Falcon 9, two-stage rocked occurred successfully on Monday, February 15, 2021, at 10:59 p.m., ET, from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

This was the 19th Starlink launch and the 5th launch for 2021.

The rocket propellants loaded at T-39 minutes. The Falcon 9 is 229 feet tall which is greater than the wingspan of 747 aircraft. With this two stage configuration, there are 9 Merlin first stage engines.

At T-30, the “Go For Launch” was received. At about 2-1/2 minutes into the flight, separation with 2nd stage occurred and the first stage descended for re-landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” — the landing failed to successfully occur.

The second stage features a single Merlin engine and pushed the 17 ft. tall payload fairing that protects the satellites to the vacuum of space, whereupon the fairing was ejected. This was the first flight of this particular fairing.

Note: Starlink domestic and international beta is now open for orders at Starlink.com and a $99 deposit is required — that deposit is fully refundable.

Fleet Space Technologies are set to launch their fifth smallsat, Centauri 3, next month aboard Rocket Lab’s They Go Up So Fast mission, taking off from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula.

Centauri 3 is Fleet Space’s fifth and most advanced smallsat to go to orbit, adding to their planned 140 strong constellation. The constellation will  provide global satellite connectivity for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). 

The commercial smallsat’s communication payload has been developed in-house by the highly skilled and experienced Fleet Space team of engineers, and boasts a huge 119x improvement in data capacity from the previous Centauri 2 payload. The payload on Centauri 3, which is roughly the size of a shoe box and weighs just under 10 kg, has been integrated with the satellite bus/avionics in collaboration with American operator Tyvak and their sister team in Italy, Tyvak International. 

The newly designed 6U smallsat will join Fleet Space’s constellation in LEO at 550 km, which is powering a global network of connected devices deployed across the globe. These devices are revolutionising the resource and mining industries, as well as providing technologies for Earth, Moon and Mars through their SEVEN SISTERS moon mission in 2023, to search for abundant, accessible water, in support of NASA’s Artemis Program.

This is the second launch in which Fleet Space has used Rocket Lab, who previously launched their Proxima I and Proxima II in 2018 from Mahia in New Zealand. Rocket Lab is a leading space systems company and launch provider dedicated to small satellite launches, and this latest launch is scheduled to lift-off from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula in mid-March. Named They Go Up So Fast, this mission will be Rocket Lab’s 19^th Electron launch, and 100th overall.

Fleet Space CEO Flavia Tata Nardini said, “It is an extraordinary day for Fleet Space as we launch our fifth commercial nanosatellite- our most advanced payload yet. Global critical infrastructure is challenged by asset remoteness, and requires secure two-way communications as well as the ability to remotely manage their assets. Fleet Space has worked for many years to create these world first features that underpin the real internet from space for things, putting the company as a leader in critical infrastructure IoT management around the world. The Centauri 3 carries our 25th payload manufactured by Fleet Space, and it is our most advanced generation yet, representing the beginning of volume manufacturing of space hardware in South Australia that will lead to a constellation of 140 nanosatellites. We want to congratulate our friends at Myriota, who are also on this Rocket Lab mission, on launching their first satellite in space. This is a great day for the South Australian Space industry.”

Peter Beck, Rocket Lab Founder and CEO, added, “We’re delighted to be delivering tailored access to orbit for our customers once again, many of whom have previously launched on Electron. With Photon, and likewise with the Kick Stage, we’re able to give our customers an unmatched level of control over their orbital insertion, even when flying as a rideshare,” he said.

Rocket Lab, a launch provider and space systems company, announces their next mission will be to deploy a range of satellites for commercial and government satellite operators, and place a next-generation Photon spacecraft in orbit to build spacecraft heritage ahead of Rocket Lab’s mission to the Moon for NASA later this year.  

Scheduled to lift-off from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula in mid-March, the ‘They Go Up So Fast’ mission will be Rocket Lab’s 19^th Electron launch overall and second mission of 2021. The launch will bring the total number of satellites launched by Electron to 104.  

 Seven satellites feature on the mission manifest, including:  

• An Earth-observation satellite for BlackSky via launch services provider Spaceflight Inc.; 
• Two Internet-Of-Things (IoT) nanosatellites for companies Fleet Space and Myriota, procured by Tyvak; 
• A technology demonstration satellite for the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra Space; 
• a weather satellite pathfinder technology demonstration from Care Weather technologies; 
• A technology demonstrator for the U.S. Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) through launch integration and program management services provider, TriSept; 
• and Rocket Lab’s in-house designed and built Photon Pathstone spacecraft which will operate on orbit as a risk reduction demonstration to build spacecraft heritage ahead of Rocket Lab’s mission to the Moon for NASA later this year.  

The six customer payloads will be integrated onto Photon, which will initially act as a Kick Stage space tug to circularize and deploy the satellites to precise orbits. After deploying the first five satellites to a 550 km circular orbit, Photon’s Curie engine will reignite to lower its attitude and deploy the final satellite to a 450 km orbit. The Curie engine’s unique ability to perform multiple relights on orbit enables Rocket Lab to deploy satellites to different orbits on the same launch. This level of payload deployment flexibility is typically reserved for dedicated missions but is a standard capability on all Electron missions.  

Following payload deployment, Photon Pathstone will remain in orbit to build flight heritage across the spacecraft’s subsystems ahead of the CAPSTONE mission to the Moon for NASA later this year, as well as Rocket Lab’s private mission to Venus in 2023. Photon Pathstone will demonstrate power management, thermal control, and attitude control subsystems, as well as newly-integrated technologies including deep-space radio capability, an upgraded RCS (reaction control system) for precision pointing in space, and sun sensors and star trackers. Pathstone is the second Photon spacecraft to be deployed to orbit, following the launch of Photon First Light in August 2020.  

Peter Beck, Rocket Lab founder and CEO, says deploying customer satellites and then continuing with an independent Photon mission is a unique capability that enables multiple missions on the same launch.  

“We’re delighted to be delivering tailored access to orbit for our customers once again, many of whom have previously launched on Electron. With Photon, and likewise with the Kick Stage, we’re able to give our customers an unmatched level of control over their orbital insertion, even when flying as a rideshare,” he said. “What’s truly unique to Electron is the ability to deploy a range of customer satellites, then continue with a separate Photon mission. It means making multiple, distinct missions capable within the same launch, reducing the time, cost, and complexity of innovating on orbit. It’s nothing short of a complete transformation in the way we go to space.”  

Mission Manifest:  

Payload: Photon 

Organization: Rocket Lab  

The Photon onboard this mission is the latest configuration of Rocket Lab’s in-house satellite platform built for operations in low Earth orbit, deep space, and on interplanetary missions. This mission follows the successful launch and deployment of Rocket Lab’s first Photon satellite fewer than six months ago on the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Optical mission in August 2020. 

Payload: BlackSky Global Series 

Organization: BlackSky, procured by Spaceflight Inc.  

BlackSky will include a single Earth observation microsatellite.  This is the seventh launch of a Gen-2 spacecraft to date. Spaceflight arranged the launch and is providing mission management and integration services for BlackSky.  

Payload: Centauri 3
Organization: Fleet Space, procured by Tyvak 
Centauri 3 is a newly-designed 6U NanoSat that will join Fleet Space’s planned constellation of 140 Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) satellites in low Earth orbit. Designed for use in the energy, utilities, and resource industries, the Centauri 3 will also test new hardware and space systems developed by Fleet Space that will support the 2023 Seven Sisters mission, a resource exploration mission by an Australian team of space, remote operations, and resource exploration companies that will launch nanosatellites and sensors to develop new resource exploration techniques for Earth, the Moon, and Mars, in support of NASA’s Artemis Program. 

Payload: Myriota 7 

Organization: Myriota, procured by Tyvak 

Myriota is the global leader in low-cost, secure satellite connectivity for the Internet of Things. Myriota 7 is the latest addition to its satellite constellation, and forms part of a crucial next step for the business, as it moves towards near-real time connectivity. It will support Myriota’s customers by further improving its existing service, which provides access to data from anywhere on Earth. Myriota’s long battery life and direct-to-orbit connectivity supports products from technology partners servicing a wide range of industries including utilities, transport and logistics, supply chain, agriculture, mining and defence.  

Payload: Veery Hatchling 

Organization: Care Weather Technologies 

The Veery Hatchling mission will test Care Weather’s vertically-integrated satellite power, computing, and avionics systems in a 1U CubeSat. It paves the way for Care Weather’s future constellation of scatterometric radar weather satellites capable of producing hourly maps of global wind speed and direction over the surface of the ocean. Veery Hatchling is the first step in Care Weather’s mission to save lives and livelihoods by better forecasting Earth’s extreme weather. 

Payload: M2 

Organization: The University of New South Wales’s Canberra Space 

This spacecraft from the University of New South Wales Canberra Space, in collaboration with the Royal Australian Air Force, will bring together emerging technologies that deliver advanced capabilities in earth observation, maritime surveillance, quantum computing, advanced AI, and laser communications. M2 follows on from the successful M2 Pathfinder mission deployed in June 2020 on Rocket Lab’s 12^th mission, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. 

Payload: Gunsmoke-J 

Organization: U.S. Army’s SMDC, procured by TriSept 

TriSept procured the rideshare slot on Electron for the U.S. Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC). Gunsmoke-J is an experimental 3U CubeSat that will test technologies that support development of new capabilities for the U.S Army. “TriSept is thrilled to be providing the rideshare slot, dispenser hardware, regulatory compliance in both the U.S. and New Zealand, and spacecraft integration for this important technology demonstration in space. We look forward to the integration of this small but game-changing payload aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron,” said TriSept CEO, Rob Spicer. 

New Light Technologies Inc. (NLT) is partnering with Alba Orbital to provide agencies in and outside of the US with innovative solutions that utilize the first available low-cost, high-resolution satellite nighttime light data.

Alba Orbital, headquartered in Scotland, has developed a unique PocketQube Satellite platform developed in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA).

The platform, known as Unicorn-2, is a pico-satellite that enables lower data collection costs due to its ultra small and light form-factor.

A tech-demo of the Unicorn-2 platform is scheduled for the first half of 2021 to collect images of Earth at night. The sensors on board Unicorn-2 are expected to collect nighttime light data in a spatial resolution of up to 24 meters per pixel, the highest resolution nighttime light data currently available for public consumption.

According to Greg Stewart, Alba Orbital’s NightLights Project Manager, Earth Observation imagery from Alba Orbital’s NightLights constellation of Unicorn-2 spacecraft will allow users to see change in our planet like never before. Following the tech-demo, Alba Orbital plans to increase the size of its Unicorn-2 constellation allowing users to track changes month-to-month with ultra-high resolution monthly composites.

Through its partnership with Alba Orbital, NLT will support both public and private sector agencies in accessing this data. The partnership will also optimize the data’s use-cases and translate them into impactful insights through the development of innovative technological solutions ranging from algorithms that process the data and the development of platforms to visualize them.

Dr. Ran Goldblatt, Chief Scientist at NLT, notes that Unicorn-2`s high-resolution nighttime light data will allow greater understanding and granularity of Earth-based phenomena than ever before.

According to Dr. Goldblatt, these insights will be invaluable to many sectors. For example, they will help the commercial sector make better investment decisions, provide governments complementary information to census surveys and tools for more efficient disaster management, and allow accurate and timely tracking of the United Nations General Assembly`s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Satellite image of Earth at night

Alba Orbital will be hosting the first international conference on night-time satellite imagery online on the February 19, 2021. The NightLights Virtual Workshop is free to attend and aims to unite global experts (virtually) in the night-time satellite imagery community, featuring distinguished guest speakers such as Dr. Goldblatt, Chief Scientist at NLT. For more information please visit www.nightlightsworkshop.com/.

New Light Technologies Inc. (NLT), based in Washington DC, is a leading provider of integrated cloud, cybersecurity, software development, data analytics, geospatial, and scientific consulting services. NLT offers distinctive capabilities in the development, implementation, and management of cloud-native platforms that enable the collection, integration, modeling, privacy protection, quality assurance, and control, and public release of federal data products and web-based decision support tools.

Alba Orbital is the a leading PocketQube manufacturer and launch provider. PocketQubes are tiny satellites consisting of 5 cm cubes that are democratizing access to space by removing economic barriers to launch services and platforms for smaller organisations. To date, Alba Orbital has deployed more PocketQubes on-orbit than any other organization worldwide, with a further 9 scheduled for launch with SpaceX in 2021.

Telesat has selected Thales Alenia Space to build its Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband 298-satellite constellation Lightspeed which offers high performing broadband professional services around the world.

Thales Alenia Space (a joint venture between Thales and Leonardo), has signed an agreement with leading global satellite operator Telesat to be the prime contractor on the construction of Lightspeed, its advanced LEO network, a multi-billion dollar project initially comprised of a fleet of 298 satellites. Telesat will rely on Thales Alenia Space not only to provide the space and mission segments, but also to be responsible for the end-to-end network performance and related specifications of the system.

This agreement has been signed in the presence of Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, Finance and Recovery of France. The first satellites are expected to be ready for launch in two years.

Following the intense work done on Lightspeed’s innovative design, this selection represents a major step in the deployment of the project, as Telesat and Thales Alenia Space significantly increase the momentum of activities to parallel with the finalization of the Lightspeed project’s financial close.

Lightspeed’s space segment will initially be comprised of 298 satellites, in the 700-750 kg class. The network will deliver multiple terabits per second across the globe for secure, low-latency, high-performing broadband professional services.

Lightspeed is built on a unique combination of advanced on-board satellite equipment — sophisticated active antennas that can dynamically refocus beams a thousand times per second, powerful and flexible processors able to address a range of bandwidth, optical laser links between satellites to create a true global mesh coverage of the world — and a mix of on-board and on-ground software ensuring the optimal use of the system resources. The flexibility brought by this system is the key to true competitiveness as it optimizes marketable capacity in relation to the location of demand, which can vary significantly across time and between hot spots such as airports and low-density areas such as remote communities. The optical laser link interconnections between the constellation satellites will provide global, mesh coverage around the world, including above the oceans and poles, with a high level of security for end-to-end services. It will optimize the ground segment with a lower number of gateway sites, more freedom on gateway locations, and the ability to deploy gateways in line with the loading of the system.

“I want to warmly thank Telesat for putting its trust in our company, and we are proud to have been selected after successfully going through a very demanding competitive process,” said Hervé Derrey,