Archives for February 2021

Chris Stott, Executive Chairman, Mansat, was the moderator of this extremely interesting interview of Sir Richard Branson, the Founder of Virgin Galactic, and Dan Hart, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Orbit, on Day Three of the SmallSat Symposium.

Chris Stott (CS): Gentlemen, you are making the extraordinary look amazing. That launch was superb and that must have been quite a moment, I mean, that was the 17th of January, not quite a month ago, you hit all of the points on the curve. So, how did it go? What’s next for Virgin Orbit?

Dan Hart (DH): It was an incredible day. It was picture perfect. We’ve now gone through the data review with and are still pinching ourselves. The orbit was perfect. Ten satellites in their place. We’re getting videos and pictures from excited students and researchers as they activate their spacecraft. It went better than anybody could have ever dreamed. Every part of the system came together.

Sir Richard Branson (RB): I’ve had quite a few tears in my eyes the last 12 months between Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit. I definitely teared up on this one. The team have worked unbelievably hard the last four years to get to here. What they were trying to achieve was note easy and we we’ll be able to launch on numerous 747s from different parts of the world. We want to be able to build rockets and ship out quickly to different parts of the world. We want them to be able to go in to the right orbit or any orbit anywhere in the world. They ticked all of the boxes and I couldn’t be happier.

CS: So, your timing on this was superb because there’s a lot of tough competition in the launch services industry right now. You’ve had a couple of competitors launch recently. You’ve been at this for a while. So, how do you see yourselves in this competitive environment?

RB: I think we’re operating a different proposition to most of the other people. We can take up more weight than in the size of the satellite and we’re going to be building rockets that are much bigger than the current rocket, as well. They’ll take up even more weight. There is an enormous demand for the kind of project we are doing, i.e., the launch from a 747 anywhere in the world, both from commercial people to put new satellites up. I think what makes us particularly unique is our capability for the US Air Force or the British Air Force, the Canadian Air Force, French Air Force, all of whom have been encouraging and working with us over the last two to three years to give them an extreme deterrent capability so that if they were to lose satellites anywhere in the world, they can be replaced incredibly quickly. If we do this cleverly, what 747 can take those satellites up, they won’t know – we can convert enough 747s and much more difficult for an enemy power to know planes than just one ground based launch which they can take out in a minutes notice. We’ve got quite a range of things that this company is capable of.

DH: If I can pipe in, I just want to shout out to the Virgin Orbit team. This is a team that… I respect any team that can take a rocket and can get to 17,000 mph or more. This is a team that came together and brought a new capability… I mean, this is the first time a liquid rocket flew from an airport under the wing of a 747 or any airplane and ended up in orbit. And so the team really advanced space technology, proved it operational and we have, as Richard said, unique capability, both from an affordability point of view and the economics of getting a rocket into 35,000 feet before it has to do any work and the flexibility, the resilience, and the deterrent that Richard mentioned. And the ability, you know, we have about 80 space agencies around the world – I think the amount of countries that have launch within their sovereign shores right now can probably be counted easily on two hands and so there’s an enormous desire and opportunity to democratize our ability to have humanity get to space.

RB: With COVID, it was not easy — everytime we were about to do something, one member got COVID so everybody had to climb down and then come back again and then somebody else got COVID, but somehow they got there, but it was, like every company in the world, it was a challenge and the team was no exception.

CS: If you can pull this off in regular time, that is extraordinary. To do this in these times of historic moment with COVID is astoundingly good and it speaks volumes to the people you have working with you. You have that ability to not just launch in the United States and I think you’ve got a launch coming up… at some point, you’re going to be the first launch in the United Kingdom. Is that correct?

DH: Yes, that’s exactly right, in Cornwall. We’ve been working with Cornwall for a couple of years now and the project is moving along well and we look forward to next year to doing our first launch at ???? airport.

RB: Many happy memories of Cornwall, a beautiful part of Britain.

CS: You’ve recently started to expand what Virgin Orbit has been doing. You took a stake in a satellite communications company, Sky & Space Global. Could you please talk us through that?

DH: You know, launch is a cornerstone of, obviously, space access and the whole space ecosystem. Our ability to flex into adjacencies is a natural. Sky & Space Global is an initial step there. We really look forward to working and developing a system and other systems. We see an evolution for the company obviously through launch, through distributed launch, both for the national security community as well as the international community of Allies, and then there are a plethora of space adjacencies, whether its in other aspects of national security, or in the commercial turnkey kinds of systems like Sky & Space Global is going after.

CS: Is it just limited to satellite communications or is it a broader look at anything that goes into orbit with Virgin Orbit?

DH: We have a pretty expansive evolution of the company planned. We’re evaluating right now with this success there’s lots of possibilities and, frankly, we’re getting lots of queries.

RB: I think something I would like to encourage the company to do and more than welcome to take this onboard is that there will be a lot of people who do approach the company with wonderful ideas to put satellites in space. It’s just that they can’t afford it. What we can also now start doing is helping them get their projects off the ground, maybe take a stake in the company, and get their satellites to orbit. We’re entrepreneurs through and through and that’s the kind of entrepreneurial thing that Virgin Orbit should be doing. If there are people out there that have great ideas, you know, put something in space but they can’t afford to do it, then we could maybe do it in terms of a stake in the company.

CS: Fascinating. I would imagine then that they would have to reach out to Dan?

DH (laughing): I think my phone is starting to ring now!

CS: Don’t put your email up, Sir Richard. What is this group you are building? How do you see all of the space companies working together? And where does space fit into the Virgin brand?

RB: Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit don’t fit together in a sort of too obvious a way. which is why we split the companies into two separate entities, one putting satellites into space and the other putting people into space. But they’re both incredibly important to the Virgin Group. Obviously they came along and saved the Virgin Group. I’m a great believer in diversification, so that, if something like SARS or COVID hits you, or 9-11 or whatever, you’re diversified enough to be able to help the companies that are in trouble and when COVID hit, we launched our Cruise line the day before COVID hit – that wasn’t a great idea – we had two airlines – that wasn’t a great idea – we had the biggest fitness chain outside America – that wasn’t a good idea – including South Africa – we had hotels around the world – that wasn’t a good idea – and so it goes on. So, the one shining light has been Galactic and Orbit and thank God we did diversify into space. I didn’t diversify into space thinking I am going to make lots of money out of space. I diversified into space because I love space, I love connecting people, I love the idea of giving people the opportunity to become astronauts who could never generally afford to become astronauts, I love creating things. I love my granddaughter who is two looking up at the sky. After Dan’s rocket went into space, and pointing up and saying Pappa’s rocket’s on the moon. Pappa’s rocket is on the moon. Anyway, there’s lots of reasons, but if it can help pay the bills to a varying degree, we are very, very grateful to space.

DH: I would also add that from the other side being in a space company that’s part of Richard’s creation of Virgin, there are some special elements – and Richard touched on some of them – you know, this feeling of purpose, that we’re in this to make a difference, and as well as the agility kind of thing that Richard expressed a little while ago for an entrepreneurial company, our sights are set high and we’re agile… it doesn’t take a lot of discussions and meetings when a good idea comes to say let’s go for it. Those are things that I’m continually reminded of through discussions with Sir Richard and the team that he has built at Virgin.

CS: Sir Richard and Dan, you both just talked about the importance of people. I’m an entrepreneur myself — I keep tabs —- and you have some great quotes on people. “Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the flow.” And that’s something we’ve always done at our company, ManSat, and its always because we followed your lead on that. Sir Richard, how do choose your teams? How do you choose your people?

RB: First of all you need somebody like Dan who genuinely cares about people, who cares about the cleaning lady or cleaning man as much as they care about their fellow directors, who look for the best in people, who praises and doesn’t criticize. If somebody messes up, doesn’t jump down their throats. When I was a kid, if I ever said anything ill of somebody, my parents would stand in front of the mirror for ten minutes and tell me how badly it reflected on myself. I think it’s that kind of approach is really important if you are running companies. The kind of people we take on are people who are great with people first and then we look for the other skills. It seems to work well at certain companies.

CS: Dan, you’ve just taken on a whole bunch of new people. You’ve demonstrated your great with people and teams and you can achieve your milestones but you are just taking on so many people, so what do you look for?

DH: Obviously you want to have some good level of skill but the positivity, the feeling of wanting to move forward and work together, is probably the most crucial part of pulling a team together, especially when you’re going to take on a hard job and working together, sometimes in stressful days, and the ability to laugh, the ability to shake off a setback and move forward, it is absolutely critical. And I think our company is a great mix of people who are new to the industry or in their first decade of work and then people who have been around for a few extra years like myself, and combining that and doing it well I think is absolutely key. The next group who are going to take us to planets and to different capabilities around the world are here and it i s really exciting to see them rising and making the system real.

RB: In the process of what you’re doing and there’s no fun in doing something unless people are going to be inspired by it and believe in it. A lot of our lives are spent at work and its critical that you don’t waste your life and say you’ve got to create something with real purpose.

CS: Sir Richard, is space the hardest thing you’ve ever done?

RB: Yes. But then again, if you’d have asked me the same question 36 years ago when we had one, second-hand, 747 flying between London and New York with British Airways with 300 planes I suspect I would have said yes, yes to Virgin Atlantic. We have set ourselves some quite big challenges and that’s made it tremendous fun, trying to overcome those challenges and trying to deal with some much bigger competitors.

CS: Dan, you spent 34 years at Boeing, one of the largest aerospace corporations in human history, and you left and joined a startup?

DH: I stared when I was 12. It was really a great transition and, honestly, I had a wonderful career with Boeing and McDonnell Douglas that was part of that in the early years. I got to do incredible things there, whether it was space labs or missile defense, or satellites, Delta rockets, but when I got the call, there’s an opportunity to work with Virgin and Sir Richard and do something new for space launch, there was no turning that down. It’s been a great learning experience, honestly, on different ways, different cultures, different ways to operate, the speed of which I learned up front. In my old job, sometimes you would have a number of meetings to make a decision. I think the first time I had a big decision and I asked Richard, he looked at me and said, you’re doing that, aren’t you?

CS: The power of delegation. We’ve got about three minutes and I have three very quick questions. Sir Richard, you look prescient when you did a SPAC… you were the first in the space industry to do a SPAC back in October of 2019. Now everyone’s talking about them. What led you down that path to be the first to go do a SPAC for space?

RB: I’m impatient.The SPAC gets through all of the rigamarole of public companies. Yes, I thought, that’s great, let’s do it.

CS: Well, it worked, that’s great. Gentlemen, last question… before a launch, before something big is about to happen, how do you center yourself? What is your moment of Zen? How do you, kind of, stay focused?

RB: I was lucky enough to have five grandkids running around me so think that kept me distracted, which is what I think I needed. Poor Dan didn’t have that chance. He was out there on the firing line.

DH: Well, I mean, for me there was a schedule of things I needed to do and people I needed to interact with, whether it was with the flight line with the launch team, greeting the flight crew as they came or interacting with the mission control folks, so luckily I had things to do. I will say I’ve never before done a launch where I was in a room by myself, which is where I ended up. We were distributed because of COVID and I’ve never experienced anything like that. It was very interesting sitting by myself, listening to the countdown, and interacting with the team. I sometimes thought the room should have been padded because of the intensity of the situation. That’s how we interacted. We were virtual and it worked, but none of those normal queues that you usually get with a countdown, you’re nodding at each other, having little sidebar discussions, none of that. It was all business.

CS: Virtual high fives… gentlemen, what advice do you have for entrepreneurs in the space industry?

RB (laughing): Good luck! Dream big and if you come up with an extraordinary idea, there will be people like myself or Dan who will most likely help turn it into reality. There’s so many extraordinary breakthroughs taking place these days and we’re looking to the next one and our doors are open.

DH: I would just say lock on to that dream, that purpose, know that it’s going to take time and you’re going to have great success and you’re going to have failures along the way and be ready for them. Use both success and failures as lessons to propel you forward.

RB: You’ll be young when you start and you’ll be old when you finish (laughing).

CS: Sir Richard, you’ve always said your dreams don’t scare you, they’re too small. And you’ve got a big event coming up with Virgin Galactic this week. What’s next for Virgin Galactic?

RB: Well, we have another milestone hopefully in Virgin Galactic’s history on Valentine’s Day. I’m delighted to say we’ve managed to get a thousand messages, love messages, from people who have been following Galactic on board and I just got the message that they managed to pack a thousand in and we’ll be on the edge of the seat watching this test flight go up – I mean, every test flight is there to try and see if it takes everything up and then we’ll have one more test flight for this and then I’m ready, fit and healthy and got my passport and waiting, waiting to go up.

CS: Sir Richard and Dan Hart, thanks so much for everything you do. And with that, thank you your participating in this year’s SmallSat Symposium.

The attendance for this session was impressive, proving once again that launch is a top contender as far as interest is concerned for the smallsat market segments.

Peter Beck of Rocket Lab, with 97 satellites in orbit in 2020, believes that 2021 will see an “even bigger monthly launch cadence and will be an incredibly busy time for us.” He also noted the firm will be relying on some recovered vehicle components. His next launch will find the Electron launch vehicle carrying 100 satellites to orbit, with four of the customers aboard this particular launch continuing their constellation builds.

When moderator Lou Zacharilla of SSPI inquired of Mr. Beck about the rumored mid-air helicopter recovery, he seemed to indicate that such a program was “relatively trivial” when compared to the task of rocket re-entry. Mr. Beck noted when asked about his ability to dream with all of his work and responsibilities, he replied, “In order to dream you first must sleep…”

Jarrod McLachlan of SpaceX also admitted there wasn’t much sleep at his company, either. He noted there’s a lot going on at SpaceX and that last year the firm produced four satellite rideshare missions, crew and Dragon launches, Starlink satellite deployments and the debut of a data program. All are especially proud of the world record breaking 143 smallsat dedicated launch that occurred last year, as well. He believes 2021 is already on track to beat the 2020 work record.

He added that the SpaceX Starship remains a top level project and the push is on toward a fully, relaunchable vehicle. Customer demand is extremely strong and SpaceX is going to have several very full rockets coming up. The company tries to create a very standard interface for payloads and if a client can fit their satellites within that defined box, SpaceX can get them into space. There’s a lot of creativity being shown as to how people are using this box. This is all part of SpaceX attempting to develop an ecosystem where customers can create what they need.

As far as any particular project that he finds extremely interesting, Mr. McLachlan said, “I love them all.” He was surprised about the SpaceX rideshare program being so public about the pricing aspects. He continued by stating that something new he’d never thought of usually comes across his desk every couple of weeks.

For Stephen Eisele of Virgin Orbit, his said his company had an historic year with Launcher 1, which made it to orbit with a flawless flight that delivered a NASA satellite to its direct target orbit — there was a lot of champagne and happiness upon that mission’s completion. The firm, he noted, offers a flexible, air launch system, a full array of launch services for customers plus a global launch network, all making Virgin Orbit a global solutions space company. He was certain 2021 will be huge year for the company. The company can handled quick call up solutions thanks to their ability to offer tailored services. He believes that all of the panelists and the launch industry in general all play important roles and compliment one another. Virgin Orbit can offer ultimate flex for customers and will play an important role in the defense and commercial markets.

As far as 2021 is concerned, Virgin Orbit has plans to get the next rocket launch off soon and a handful of missions this year will lead to a monthly cadence of launches. Investments have also been made to the company’s factory, as well, that will help create high throughput for building satellites at a rapid pace. Virgin Orbit will be a turnkey provider, addressing a niche market, where most of customers will require more individualized and specific requirements which means the company will be handling different types of mission requirements across the globe.

When queried by Mr. Zacharilla regarding various nations not having the capabilities to produce their own space capabilities, such as Nepal, and are niche markets such as that important to Virgin Orbit, Mr. Eisele stated that such was a big part of the company’s sovereign launch capabilities. The firm can control the entire launch environment and also stimulate the local logistics supply chain. The launch capabilities are totally mobile. He added that Virgin Orbit will be launching from Spaceport Cornwall in the UK and will also have a launch from Japan at the end of 2022. Virgin Orbit could well be seen as a “launcher airline” that will allow regional launches and enable small companies to get access to space, all part of the firm’s future vision.

The moderator then wanted to discuss various types of risks that enter into the launch equation. Mr. Beck said the primary risk is heading into launches again and again and managing to do so reliably is the hardest aspect. No one ever wants to lose a flight, but such can and does occur and that’s where customer trust plays such a crucial role. All systems and processes and an understanding of the vehicle must be totally reliable… that’s the absolute key.

For Stella Guillen of Arianespace, which has an amazing and successful launch record, relayed that when quality issues arise, they must be solved immediately. Additionally, when bringing in a new vehicle and new technology, every step must fit into a reasoned launch plan with consistency and quality. Everyone, she said, has issues at some point or another and all are constantly learning. The critical issue to to learn how to correct the challenges that come up and do so quickly. Consistency, mission management, relations with other companies, all those things are extremely important.

Mr. McLachlan of SpaceX stated the firm is certainly not risk averse. Granted, there is a very robust mission assurance process for the Falcon 9 program, whereas the Starship program lends itself to a more risk acceptance culture where a little more risk can be taken. Reusability, lessons learned, all of these elements are rolled into the production vehicle.

Mr. Eisele stated that as the company has humans in the launch loops due to it being an air launch systems, the safety of the entire system is taken very seriously and has a much more, robust, safe assurance program. “That’s why it took a little more time to evolve our program, due to the safety issues, he said. The Virgin Orbit risk posture is at the highest level to make certain launches are safe and effective. Nothing new is done unless all have considered and addressed all of the safety factors.

This year certainly seems to be not only the year for smallsats, but also the year for launch as more and more firms prepare to enter or continue their good works within this crucial market segment in efforts to ensure smallsats can be delivered to orbit reliably and quickly. The panelists all agreed that 2021 will be an amazing year for the smallsat launch industry.

As Karl Schmidt of KippsDeSanto & Company said, “The Space M&A markets couldn’t be any hotter. We’ll see more buying and more exits in 2021.” There was total agreement by the panel and everyone seemed to be onboard with his comment

The general consensus was certainly that 2020 was an interesting year, and for James Murray of PJT Partners, it was actually three separate years in one.

First, the private placement market was healthy and robust with around $4 billion in private capital aid for business being doled out, enabling those firms to continue to build out their constellations — the industry and the markets continued to hum along quite admirably.

Then COVID arrived and the second segment of 2020 arrived when the market tipped sideways.

The third portion of 2020 found firms emerging from the shock of the coronavirus invasion and a different market materialized and the industry regained some of its footing. He noted that was used to be a nice market has now drawn a lot more attention. The success of Starlink, he noted, sent shock waves through the industry — many firms were struggling with the new smallsat paradigm. And a point that many agreed upon throughout the session was that there has never been a better time to raise capital. This is also a tale of two cities, where the opportunities for the smallsat segment are excitingly available, but for larger operations, the time has become far more challenging.

Many noted that a key investment player is the government and is becoming more and more interested in the smallsat environs. The pandemic helped the government realize the value of the space sector and their ability to access commercial space data and found such to be highly useful. Commercial space is very relevant to government players in the US.

The high profiles of OneWeb and Intelsat bankruptcies actually caused a refresh of the industry, according to Noel Rialovski of GH Partners. Balance sheets became healthier and the deck was cleaned up going forward. With $10 billion in capital coming into the industry, new investment models will further helps some of the smaller companies in the industry move from a small to a large size.

John Stack of Canaccord Genuity readily agreed that 2020 was clearly a dynamic year; however, there were many questions about where were all of the company exits into the markets. A lot was happening on the M&A side as company’s pondered their exits and examined a myriad of opportunities to grow. He notes a continued sense of urgency for those who have a fear of missing out. There are a lot of strategic discussions regarding what the best path forwardly be for them. If they don’t engage a SPAC, what does it mean about raising money downstream. Where do they fit into the ecosystem with competitive sets? Private rounds? Private equity rollups? Public equity routes? Many of the new investors are trying to get educated to get a feel for what’s going on while companies weigh their strategic options. There’s a lot of money, a lot of deals, and a lot of rollups.

In looking at SPAC (special purpose acquisition companies) Mr. Murray noted these have been around for decades. What is new in the market environment all now find themselves in. Market timing is crucial. There will be about 250 SPACs out there by the end of next month (March 2020). He believes there are different groups of players with the SPAC confines: Hedge fund investors who find the opportunity to put money into a SPAC and then have a look at early stage movement and can pull out when they wish. Then there are the SPAC sponsors who are coming to the table and they are chasing growth.

When looking across New Space, many companies are promising a lot of appreciation. The third group are companies’ management teams who themselves are seeking to raise funds at reasonable rates and they are looking at SPAC to see if this is suitable for their business plans. He thinks that in 2021, in genera, there will probably be five or six portfolio companies looking at SPACs, which is clearly a big topic of conversation. Whether they go forward will have to be seen. SPAC is simply a way of getting business capital into the door. There is some risk for companies that are not ready for primetime going out — a little bit of a rush to exit — and a SPAC would not be as great for those firms.

The panel agreed that SPACs are not for everyone… there are a number of concerns to consider when going public… there are investor relations concerns, legal issues and the necessity of building up senior management to handle the new requirements SPACs place on the firm and other challenges.

Without question, the continuing belief by the panelists was that the smallsat industry has certainly evolved into an exciting market segment and is attracting huge amounts of capital. There will be horizontal integration between firms that have complimentary data sets, for one thing.

One area being seen by Mr. Rimalovski, is that small companies have overlapping strategic interests and the anticipation is, especially in the EO sector, is horizontal integration, particular with those firms that have complimentary data sets. Additionally, a many investors not seen before in this sector are coming in taking a look. In terms of the GEO role, there will more than likely be a big recapitalization of these companies thru bankruptcy — LEO models will be eating GEOs traditional lunch, especially within the data sector. No doubt that the industry will continue to be disrupted by smallsats.

Mr. Schmidt added that many equity groups — particularly in the mid- to smaller size equity groups — that haven’t previously been able to get into the space sector are now looking at their next platform, such as the services and software side.

Mr. Murray believes that deal announcements are an indicator of positive activity. Many of these deals are under confidentiality agreements; however, he expects to see many new verticals opening up, especially around comms via smallsats. He thinks LEO operators may well consider funding along the s perhaps considering public financing route.

When discussing government involvement within the smallsat industry, Tom Gillespie of In-Q-Tel thinks it’s difficult right now to make a pronouncement on how the Biden administration is going to treat space. There are some questions regarding the National Space Council and how it will move forward and if the Office of Space Commerce will actually survive. He did note that, clearly, government is paying attention and is watching what’s happening in space. A lot of government money is going into the market segment. In example, the USAF is investing in smaller companies. There will be pressure on defense and intel budgets going forward, so space is a good place to be. Government is still grappling with how much should they own outright, or, do they pay someone to handle the project and at least get a piece of those operations.

Moderator Randy Segal of Hogan Lovells said that space is the next sexy thing. The rest of the world over the last two to three years has come to realize that space is the really cool thing and that is where they want to be. People want to invest and be part of it. She then asked for Words of Wisdom from the panel.

Mr. Rimalovski answered that small companies that are stretching for capital investment must be quite careful if they plan on doing business in western world — foreign ownership can be an impediment and if that path is taken, they must take into account that there will be a lot of legal fees. Mr. Murray succinctly stated, “Team, Tech and Traction, with a focus on the last ‘T’.” He will be excited to finally see company CEOs and management teams get their place in the sun, as they have imbued their companies with their own blood, sweat and tears into their firms. Finally to be seen will be the acknowledgement of their hard work. Mr. Schmidt emphasized that the space M&A markets couldn’t be any hotter and that there will be more buying and more exits in 2021. For Mr. Gillespie, this is going to be a truly exciting year, with the government really heading into commercial space. He also believes there will be a number of company exits via SPAC, which is really healthy for the industry.

Gathering all of the comments together in a single channel, there was no doubt by the panelists that this was an extremely exciting time to be involved in the smallsat industry.

From the session’s opening query regarding the state of storage costs by moderator Dr. Chris Boshuizen of DCVC (Data Collective), through the efforts of Microsoft as stated by Stephen Kitay of Microsoft Azure Space to deliver the cloud to the space community, the panelists all agreed on one bottom line: Cloud services are phenomenal.

Spencer Ziegler of Orbital Wave said, “The processing power for startups is a game changer, simplifying the data flow from reception at the ground station to the network to the cloud and controlling it. That’s important and is how we bring the cost of space down. Without this advance, New Space would not be taking place.”

The cloud allows companies to focus on what smallsats do best, building a focused solution. Those companies do not have to worry about all of those other elements… the cloud enables a tighter integration of services, as indicated by Bronwyn Agrios of National Geographic.

For all, the ability to ensure satellite data is readily available is so incredibly important — this was emphasized by Rosalie van der Maas of Ellipsis Drive. “It’s a zoo [of data] out there and solutions for data visualization must be offered.”

When Dr. Boshuizen asked if we have all of the data we need, and then inquiring what is needed, Mr. Ziegler quickly replied, “More sensors, more satellites, more launches.”

The topic moved on to SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites and the question was how such technology was evolving. Dominic Edmunds of PlanetWatchers noted that the value is there, as there are paying customers for SAR. However, those customers don’t care if the data they receive came from SAR or not… the value is in the analysis. He felt the industry tends to get carried away with technical white papers. The smallsat actors tend to read them… customers don’t. He pressed on by stating, “You have to believe in your product and get your product into the market and believe in your customer more than anything else. Believe in the value of the use case.”

Following up, Mr. Edmunds remarked that a firm’s use case should be presented to the customer and then the benefits explained to them. “Make it something they can be enthused about.”

Scary, that’s what Ms. van der Maas revealed about end users and how they react to purchasing anything that’s related to Earth Observation (EO). They won’t tell you that they are, she said, they simply don’t understand it. In fact, a company can try and understand their customers, “but the customer doesn’t understand you back.”

A general consensus was that the pricing for EO data was “incredibly vague and opaque” in many cases, with different prices for varying services, processing and analysis for different customers being quoted. Ms. van den Maas added that about one in five cases actually ends up with a sale… many customers defer their purchase due to the mix in pricing structures and close the sale possibility by saying “maybe next month.”

When it comes to actually building business success, Mr. Edmunds said there’s a lot of money going into this industry, but that business must be able to prove they can generate revenue… even more than that, turn an actual profit. How can what is being offered change their lives. “Understand the pain and pivot to address something specific. The potential is phenomenal. Be fully focused on your customers.” The panelists all agreed that business success requires fully focused attention on the customers.

Generally speaking, the determination by this panel of subject matter experts was that SATCOM operations should realize customers want to receive their data in a reliable way at a realistic price point. Pricing models are far too complicated. And the customers’ needs must be the focal point for the data and analysis sale.

With an Astra 3D printed engine all fired up to his left, Steve Jurvetson of Future Ventures presented his keynote presentation during the first day of the SmallSat Symposium.

He noted the fact that the Astra smallsat engine is “really that small” and that thy just went public via a merger into SPAC and raised $500 million on a $2 billion valuation.

Steve also showed the largest slice of the moon, a lunar meteorite, that he looks at each day as it brings him great joy. “I’m just geeking out on space today,” he added.

He continued by noting that there is a revolution underway in smallsats, satellite constellations and mega-constellations and he wanted to share some of the enthusiasm his firm has for this sector. His company, Future Ventures, has only invested in two space companies, those being SpaceX and Planet, and they are incredibly exciting.

As a venture capitalist, Mr. Jurvetson served on the board of both SpaceX and Planet Labs for many years. “Frankly, startups, new entrants, they all do meaningful innovation,” he said. “Just a general statement in business, that is, perhaps, without exception, every meaningful advance, every advance in the history books that have been written about, every change to a core business, is led by new entrants, not by an incumbent. So don’t expect any difference in the space industry. Startups in this business are important, because that’s where the future may lay.”

Mr. Jurvetson animatedly said there is certainly something afoot, something exciting in the air, anticipation, across many fronts, and he believes that can largely be credited to SpaceX and those others who are following, copying, and hoping to do something competitive to SpaceX, as well. All great for the satellite business. “If you are in the business of cloud services or internet services, and somebody radically lowers the cost of access, via fiber or Starlink or whatever may be, if you’re a cloud services provider, this is great. So, the same for satellite businesses. If you want to launch satellites to orbit, there’s nothing better than SpaceX and 150 competitors trying to do that for you.”

He said it was pretty amazing how much worked for SpaceX the first time in the company’s design stack. “Why might that be?” he asked. “I think the answer really resides with software. The fundamental competitive advantage of SpaceX, Tesla, Planet Labs, is their software stack and a system engineering realization — not a component subsystem realization — but a system level engineering of a product around a software modality, the same way the iPhone just re-ran away with the entire mobile phone business.”

Steve showed a graph entitled “120 Years of Moore’s Law” that showed how much computational power a dollar can buy… “Realize, humanity’s capacity to compute has been compounding uninterrupted for 120 years. The main takeaway? Computing power doubles every year.”

With reference to the Apollo program, which consumed over half of all semiconductor output of the world, back in its heyday, Steve noted that was all about software. What’s going on now is a mega-trend, not just a space trend.

Over 99 percent of all satellites launched will be part of large constellations, he stated. Smallsats can be flow low and frequently and can take advantage of the latest chips and are, basically, disposable satellites. With a deep nod to Planet Labs, Steve noted that the company manages 3 million images every day and image10x as much as every other commercial and public sources combined.

Back to SpaceX, he mentioned the technically advanced 60 satellite pancake stack and the ability of the rocket to rotate the satellite in orbit to eject the Starlinks from the fairing and into their assigned orbits. No springs required.

He closed by stating there’s never been a better time to be a satellite business person, a satellite entrepreneur, or frankly a customer of any type. There’s incredible change afoot.

Comments from attendees of his keynote were highly positive of Steve’s presentation, calling the video “insightful” to “loaded with facts, full of insights, a most enjoyable 30 minutes” to “best presentation I’ve seen in several years!”

Certainly Mr. Jurvetson’s presentation was one of the most interesting keynotes of this, or any other, space/satellite symposium.

The moderator for this informative session on Earth Observation (E) was Adam Keith, the Affiliate Principal Advisor for Euroconsult. His initial inquiry was, what kind of products should the industry be building?

Shay Har-Noy (Techstars) — All should start from a use case and then figure out what technology to use to satisfy the customers. Value to the end-user must be shown. Companies must think about end-users and customers because it’s all about what value can be provided to them.

Adam Maher (Ursa Space Systems) — One of his main concerns was how do we educate the markets as to what these systems can do.

Nina Soleng (KSAT) — In spite of COVID, the company was able to run as usual (with more than 20,000 passes) and able to even hire more people in spite of COVID. There were some delays in expected tenders, the result of the firm’s exposure to the rise and fall in oil prices, one of their main end users. There should be multi-mission use of different technologies as well as new agreements with satellite operators and more ground stations should be built.

Rafal Modrzewski (ICEYE) — His company has recently launched three sats and other companies within this market segment have also launched a number of SAR satellites. The firm now has 10 completed. He is excited to see additional capacity coming online and the acceleration of smallsat launches. What is everyone going to do in the future? Data must be able to downloaded quickly as the real-time, global monitoring opportunity is very big and, over the next decade, will find increased demand for various industries. Companies must bring a lot of value across many different disciplines, such as natural disasters.

Adam Keith — What must companies be good at accomplishing? The one size fits all doesn’t work at all for EO. Should companies coming to market be specialized within one, two, or three specific markets?

Rafal Modrzewski — Use cases always require a different set of tools. There’s never going to be a single data set that can solve a specific problem. Core data is one of those, but it’s never enough. More and more constellations specialize in delivering specific data, but won’t be applicable to a single solution. Acquired data must merge with other data sets.

Emiliano Kargieman (Satellogic) — Twelve new satellites have been launched by his company since the onslaught of the pandemic. The company now has more capacity for data acquisition and it’s coming to a point where the firm can show what they’ve been working on. The pandemic has accelerated this trend for more data, particularly on the government side where there’s unsatisfied demand from more and more data. That market is showing an extremely strong demand. However, as an industry, the price point still remains too expensive for EO, and it’s all about the price point. Firms are trying to calculate what the tradeoffs are when dealing with what info can be collected and at a price point that makes sense to the customer, be they commercial or government. It’s simple to turn on faucet and get water and that ease-of-use is where EO firms need to get their data. Build apps for the customer who can open the data faucet and do what they need to do to get the information into users’ hands easily and quickly.

James Crawford (Orbital Insight) — A use case determines value. Pricing is incredibly differential. The supply chain creates the need for a company to price imagery very deferentially and must show the value of the imagery to the customer in order for their ROI to be acceptable. One image or thousands of images may both possess an identical value to different customers.

Shay Har-Noy — How much do we charge for the data? How much does it cost to install the sensors? If each water module in the previously mentioned water faucet analogy is used differently, pricing becomes challenging.

Nina Soleng — If we cannot provide what the customers wants, then they end up not buying at all. Access to data is still too complicated, thanks to licensing agreements, country restrictions and so on. Combinations of different sensors and providers result in different agreements or licensing. There is a need to see a more disruptive approach. The pre-paid value approach, that’s limiting to data access. Regional restraint through exclusive regional reseller agreements are problematic. If the end-user has difficulty getting what they want, they may end up not buying at all.

Adam Keith — Does the reseller market work?

Nina Soleng — With Oil & Gas, a company can have an agreement that is mainly based in one country but that firm then wants information from all over the world and agreement problems arise and there’s a lot of issues to get that client what they need from the area they want.

Rafal Modrzewski — The more use cases you can solve with the same image for the same site is a plus. Collection stacks are constant, the volume of data produced and used all have to work on the use cases to convert that data into value, one way or the other.

Adam Keith — What about orbital congestion? Is this of concern?

Rafal Modrzewski — He notes that this is becoming more of a problem. His company is trying to find a solution to it and a lot of work has gone into this situation. He does not believe this is a dire problem as of yet — his company performs collision avoidance maneuvers, but that is not a daily occurrence.

Nina Soleng — This is a huge opportunity for virtual Earth implementation to derive a solution that is needed by the industry.

James Crawford — He believes collision avoidance systems will happen. He also commented that sub-meter imagery is going to take a few more years to develop. The aim for success is to get sub-meter resolution to customers at a reasonable price point.

AASC is proud to announce that in August of 2020, the company was selected by ASTRA LLC to deliver a flight-ready version of the firm’s Metal Plasma Thruster (MPT) for ASTRA’s EWS Rapid Revisit Optical Cloud Imager (RROCI) Mission, scheduled for launch in early 2022.

The U.S. Space Force‘s (USSF) Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) has selected ASTRA, LLC to develop and demonstrate an Electro-Optical / Infrared (EO/IR), LEO-based, cloud characterization solution (RROCI) that supports U.S. warfighter operations. RROCI is currently funded through launch readiness.

AASC is proud to support this project as a provider of a compact, reliable electric propulsion thruster with no moving parts, using solid metal propellant and a low voltage power processing unit. The scalable MPT configurations are described in www.aasc.space.

A flight ready unit will be delivered to Pumpkin Labs who has been selected by ASTRA to build and integrate the 12U spacecraft bus. The AASC MPT will raise the 12U spacecraft from its injection orbit up to its operational orbit in the early mission phase, provide attitude adjustments throughout the mission and finally maneuver the craft down to a lower orbit for burn-up at the end of the mission.

AASC has matured the MPT thruster with recent support from NASA via an SBIR contract. Direct thrust measurements made at NASA on a sensitive pendulum thrust stand confirm the predictions based on plasma parameters in the thruster.

AASC has the capability to manufacture the MPT line with short lead times and at a relatively low cost compared to other electric propulsion solutions.

Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has contracted ABL Space Systems, of El Segundo, California, to supply a rocket and associated launch services for the company’s first, UK, vertical satellite launch.

The project, known as UK Pathfinder Launch, is planned to be the first ever, vertical, smallsat launch from Scotland in 2022. This will also be the first UK commercial launch for U.S.-based ABL Space Systems’ new RS1 rocket. ABL Space Systems’ flexible, integrated GSO launch system, and RS1 rocket, allows for a rapid and cost-effective deployment with outstanding launch performance.

Lockheed Martin’s UK Pathfinder Launch supports the UK Space Agency’s commercial spaceflight program – Launch UK. In October, the UK Space Agency confirmed Lockheed Martin’s plans to move its programme to the Shetland Space Centre and in January, planning proposals were submitted for the space launch facility in Unst.

The addition of ABL Space Systems as a partner completes Lockheed Martin’s UK Pathfinder Launch programme team. On launch day, ABL Space Systems’ RS1 rocket will lift off from Shetland Space Centre, in Unst, Shetland, which is the UK’s most northerly island. Once in orbit, the rocket will release a small launch orbital maneuvering vehicle, an agile platform built by MOOG, in Reading, UK, which can carry and deploy up to six 6U CubeSats, optimising orbital placement and timing for each small satellite’s respective missions. 

To demonstrate the full value of this new UK space transportation capability, two of the cubesats deployed will be Lockheed Martin’s own technology demonstration spacecraft.

In 2019, ABL Space Systems announced that it had received a strategic investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures to advance the launch provider’s development and test programme.

Nik Smith, Regional Director, Lockheed Martin Space, said, “We are absolutely committed to the success of this programme and the world class capability that ABL Space Systems brings will allow us to build on our long-standing partnership with the UK and strengthen the growth of the UK space sector, aligned to the UK Government’s prosperity and industrial strategy.”

“ABL Space Systems is proud to partner with Lockheed Martin on the UK Pathfinder Launch Program,” said Harry O’Hanley, Co-Founder and CEO of ABL Space Systems. “Our team was founded to deliver new launch capabilities, on-demand. We’re thrilled at the opportunity bring our system to Shetland’s launch site and execute this ground-breaking mission with our partners.”

Ian Annett, Deputy CEO, UK Space Agency said, “We want the UK to be the first in Europe to launch small satellites into orbit, attracting innovative businesses from all over the world, accelerating the development of new technologies and creating hundreds of high-skilled jobs across the whole of the UK. Lockheed Martin’s selection of ABL Space Systems for their UK Pathfinder launch brings us one step closer to realising this ambition – putting the UK firmly on the map as Europe’s leading small satellite launch destination. In this challenging time, it’s more important than ever that we support technologies that will help create jobs and economic growth, enabling people and businesses across the country to benefit from the commercial opportunities offered by the UK’s growing space sector and the many firms throughout its supply chain.”

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) PSLV-C51 is planning to launch Brazil’s Amazonia-1 as the primary satellite and 20 co-passenger satellites aboard PSLV-C51. This will be the 53rd mission of PSLV and liftoff will occur from Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. The launch is tentatively scheduled for 1023 hrs, IST, on February 28, 2021, subject to weather conditions.

PSLV-C51/Amazonia-1 is the first dedicated commercial mission of NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), a Government of India company under the nation’s Department of Space. NSIL is undertaking this mission under a commercial arrangement with Spaceflight Inc. USA.

Amazonia-1 is the optical Earth Observation (EO) satellite of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). This satellite will provide remote sensing data to users for monitoring deforestation in the Amazon region and analysis of diversified agriculture across the Brazilian territory.

The 20 co-passenger satellites include one from ISRO (INS-2TD), four from IN-SPACe (three UNITYsats from a consortium of three Indian academic institutes and one Satish Dhawan Sat from Space Kidz India) and 15 from NSIL.