Archives for June 2021

As part of its education outreach initiative and a leader in the smallsat industry driving space mission for universities, the KSF Space Foundation announced they have released new cubesat board systems for their education kit that is also ready To fly.

The cubesat kit is affordable for most universities in developing and other countries and can be purchased, usually within the budget of any lab or school. The new circuit board was designed, manufactured and also tested for deployment for any cubesat in a space up to an altitude of up to 250 km. The electronics board modules are independent bus boards that can be stacked, attached and interconnected, as desired. The board was designed to be light in terms of weight as well as cost-effective, being designed to a smaller size and with a low power requirement for operation.

The model is tested and ready to fly, easy to integrate and can integrate with any extra, needed payload. The basic model comes with all of the major cubesat instruments; however, KSF Space Foundation is offering other advanced models that can address various missions tasks.

The foundation is offering to launch the cubesat / smallsat to near space at an altitude up to 40 km for testing and to capture climate change data or for any other missions that are needed by the university or school as part of KSF’s vision to encourage universities to develop and launch space missions to space.

The company stated that this cubesat kit is considered the world’s least expensive smallsat for education and research outreach.

KSF Space foundation is offering free enrollment to the company’s accredited Nanosatellite Engineering Professional certification “NEP Certificate” for as many as three candidates upon purchasing the cubesat kit.

Dr. Kayyali, Chairman of KSF Space Foundation, said, “This model will allow universities and schools with a small budget to develop their space project easily — there is no need to secure funding.”

KSF Space Foundation was initially founded to enable cost-efficient access to LEO with zero-environmental impact flying solutions. The foundation offers access to near-space and LEO for research and scientific experiments in many fields, as Earth or Space Observation, biological testing, satellite positioning detection, earth magnetic field measurement, radio transmit, atmosphere science and technology experiment.

Alaska Communications (NASDAQ: ALSK) has signed a Distribution Partner Agreement with OneWeb to expand the company’s connectivity solutions across Alaska.

Through the agreement, Alaska Communications will sell OneWeb’s LEO satellite service to their customers and use OneWeb’s infrastructure for critical middle mile connections. LEO satellites deliver fiber-like connectivity performance to areas that have been inaccessible via terrestrial options. Businesses, local governments, schools, healthcare providers and resource developers need high speed, low latency connections to keep up with growing demands, like video conferencing, telehealth, cloud computing and more.

LEO services through Alaska Communications and OneWeb will be available for service in the fourth quarter of 2021.

“We’re pleased to work with OneWeb to offer LEO services in Alaska,” said Bill Bishop, president and CEO of Alaska Communications. “We see this as a milestone moment in our ability to offer low-latency, high-speed service across Alaska, particularly in rural areas. We see this solution as an important piece of our toolkit. We’re known for creating custom solutions to meet our customer’s needs. Collaborating with OneWeb augments our capabilities in serving our business and government customers.”

“Alaska Communications has unparalleled experience delivering communications to Alaskans for more than 100 years and uniquely understands where the need is across the state,” said Neil Masterson, CEO of OneWeb. “We are thrilled to add our network to their offering and to be working together to see all of Alaska connected.”

Dawn Aerospace (Dawn) and Colorado Air and Space Port (CASP) have entered into an MOU, which lays out a series of future interactions that are mutually expected to occur between the two entities, but are not legally binding.

Future actions include Dawn establishing a presence at CASP, working with CASP to create a relationship with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and, eventually, conducting test flights and spaceplane launches.

In December of 2020, Dawn was granted an Unmanned Aircraft Operator Certificate by the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority to fly from a conventional airport. Dawn’s Mk-II Aurora is their latest spaceplane iteration. Their Mk-III Aurora, a two-stage orbital system, is currently in development.

Alongside the testing and development ongoing on the company’s spaceplanes, Dawn provides in-space satellite propulsion to the firm’s global customers.. Dawn has successfully seen eight of their in-space propulsion units launched in 2021 on Vega, Soyuz, and SpaceX vehicles.

The company’s spaceplane division is interested in expanding business operations to include Colorado Air and Space Port in Adams County.

Dawn Aerospace was awarded the 2020 Hi-Tech Start-up Company of the Year at the 2020 New Zealand Hi-Tech Awards for developing technology to access space in a more scalable and sustainable way than is currently possible with traditional rockets.

“In order to provide unprecedented access to space, we’ve pursued technologies that will operate much like a fleet of aircraft – taking off and landing at airports globally,” said James Powell, Dawn Co-founder. “We’re pleased to work with the supportive Adams County Board to bring our rocket-powered suborbital plane, and longer-term our orbital spaceplane, to Colorado.”

“The Adams County Board looks forward to creating this new partnership with Dawn Aerospace and eventually having them operate at Colorado Air and Space Port,” said Eva J. Henry, Adams County Commissioner and Board Chair. “This partnership will bring a multitude of innovative opportunities for all involved, and we can’t wait to see what comes next from this impressive company.”

“The amount of interest in Colorado Air and Space Port from international and domestic aerospace companies over the past three years has been amazing,” said Raymond Gonzales, Adams County Manager. “This agreement with a truly innovative company like Dawn Aerospace is an exciting development as we continue to increase our aerospace partnerships while also expanding our general aviation activity at CASP.”

“Dawn Aerospace has successfully worked with a number of European countries for the launch of their propulsion units, and we are thrilled this company will be establishing a presence with us,” said Dave Ruppel, Colorado Air and Space Port Director. “Dawn Aerospace is a leader in the industry. Having a spaceplane that can make multiple suborbital trips a day with the same vehicle, take off and land from a conventional airport, and uses green propellants will help drive the industry to create more proficient space vehicles.”

The Australian Space Agency has announced Adelaide smallsat manufacturer for the Internet of Things (IoT) — Fleet Space Technologies — as one of two recipients in round two of the Federal government’s Moon to Mars Supply Chain Capability Improvement grant.

This will ensure Fleet Space can continue to be a growing contributor to Australia’s thriving space sector and play a key role in NASA’s Moon to Mars project, all the while cementing Australia’s ability to compete in the international space economy.

The $386,770 received through this grant will enable Fleet Space to improve the capabilities of their agnostic, hybrid, satellite, low-powered wide area network (LPWAN), as well as expanding on the firm’s already deployed solutions for partners SA Power Networks (SAPN) and OZ Minerals, including collaborating to miniaturize and ruggedize sensors in the network. Together, the partners will pursue commercial supply chain opportunities, illustrating a terrestrial application of space technology that can be extended to Moon and Mars activities.

According to the firm, the success of this grant establishes Fleet Space as a major player in the Australian space sector, significantly growing the company’s development of cutting-edge technologies and increasing international supply chain capabilities as well as creating new Australian jobs as part of the government’s $150 million Moon to Mars initiative.

Fleet Space, which already has five smallsats in LEO, with their sixth launching within the next couple of weeks, will be specifically channeling the grant into two of its customers using its device agnostic LPWAN network for the development of remote massive IoT applications, both on Earth and in space, and deployed throughout urban and regional South Australia.

The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Christian Porter, said “These grants will support the two local businesses to develop their work and tap into national and international space supply chains, helping grow skills and capabilities in the Australian space industry. We are helping Australian companies be part of NASA’s plan to return to the Moon and prepare for missions to Mars, at the same time as strengthening our own space manufacturing base.”

Fleet Space CEO Flavia Tata Nardini said, “Winning this grant means our team can expedite and improve our manufacturing processes on devices specifically designed for our partners, that will ultimately end up on the Moon and Mars. Making them smaller with the ability to function when exposed to extreme temperatures they would experience once deployed in space, is really cool. It is an exciting acknowledgement of the high quality of work we are producing right here in Australia, and a step towards scaling up our capacity for global space industry customers to access.”

The other recipient in this round of grants was Crystalaid Manufacture that supplies electronic components to the international space industry.

Xenesis, Inc., an innovator in the free space optical communications (FSO) technology sector, has acquired a minority stake in Space Micro Inc. — this is a union both Xenesis and Space Micro have been diligently working toward solidifying.

Through this agreement, Space Micro will become the exclusive manufacturer for components used in the Xenesis product line (including Xen-Hubs and Xen-Nodes) and Space Micro will also include the Xenesis devices in their product catalog and website.

While the devices can be integrated into many other satellite designs, a number of the units have been earmarked for the Xenesis Intercessor constellation that is due to be launched in 2023. The strength of both these companies joining forces goes far beyond vertical integration as each brings unique value to the table that will only set to enhance the common goal of building the first FSO global mesh network.

There is a lot to look forward to as Xenesis and Space Micro continue to work together while offering downlinking capabilities of 10 Gbps, real time latency, reduced costs,and an inherently secure / data agnostic FSO network.

Mark LaPenna, CEO of Xenesis, said he “is elated at this opportunity to join forces with Space Micro as they have some of the most advanced LCT’s on the market today. Partnering with Space Micro will help us to build our constellation design and generate revenues only utilizing less than 50 satellites while maintaining the ability to cover the majority of the earth’s population, including many areas like parts of Asia and Africa which have never had access to a connected world. Take our two companies, Xenesis and Space Micro, and together you now have one of the most advanced backhaul networks ever launched.”

David R. Czajkowski, CEO of Space Micro, added, “The unique and transformative Xenesis business model will aid in enabling rapid growth in the emerging space optical marketplace. This teaming of a telecom company, Xenesis, and a space optical communications hardware company, Space Micro, will benefit both commercial and governmental users. We are very pleased to have been selected by Xenesis as their exclusive manufacturer of lasercom terminals and to support our joint demo mission called Intercessor.”

Based in Chicago, IL Xenesis is a space telecommunications company which uses optical technology & space as a medium, to deliver low cost, low latency & high-capacity communications to Earth Observation, Network Operator & Enterprise customers.

Space Micro is an engineering-driven business focused on technology advancement for high-reliability satellite subsystems. SMI has garnered a hard-earned reputation based on their innovative, affordable, high-performance communications, digital, and electro-optic systems, as well as their ability to leverage commercial technologies to meet military and space requirements. Their dauntless determination and enthusiasm have fueled their engineering of game-changing technologies and to date maintained a flawless space flight heritage of over 2.4 million hours with a phenomenal SATCOM data rate of 100 Gbps.

Orbital Sidekick (OSK) has revealed information regarding their upcoming launch of the firm’s newest and most powerful hyperspectral imaging satellite — Aurora.

Aurora leverages OSK’s previous experience collecting and analyzing hyperspectral data to provide action oriented insights on the world, with a broad focus on sustainability. The Aurora satellite will serve OSK’s customers in the energy, mining, and defense sectors, including expanding contracts and pilot program opportunities for oil and gas pipeline monitoring & methane mapping, clean energy resource exploration, sustainable mining practices, and wildfire risk mitigation.

The Orbital Sidekick Aurora Satellite is a 30 kg precursor to the six 100 kg ESPA class GHOSt satellites that are scheduled for launch in 2022. Spaceflight will be coordinating the launch with a total of 36 payloads onboard the SpaceX Transporter-2 rideshare mission, occurring on June 24, 2021, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida.

Aurora will capture more than 450 spectral bands in the visible to shortwave infrared light spectrum (400 to 2500 nm) with a pixel size of approximately 30 meters, making it the highest resolution commercial hyperspectral imagery available to date.

“We’re excited to be launching Aurora to help provide consistent monitoring services across all of our clients as well as further the exploration for clean energy sources globally. Working with Astro Digital, OSK will be able to focus on the payload and extract information from our unique and proprietary hyperspectral data with the utmost precision,” said Dan Katz, CEO and Co-Founder of Orbital Sidekick.

The new French SATCOM operator Rovial SAS is unveiling their plan to develop, build and operate an European-centric, secure, end-to-end, high-capacity, and scalable satellite constellation.

Rovial leads a consortium that will include several, cutting-edge, European companies to realize the satellite network that will establish an independent European communications backbone in space and contribute to Europe’s economic growth, safety, and security.

The constellation will serve a range of applications, including Internet-of-Things (IOT), autonomous vehicles, video/rich-data communications, and defense and humanitarian missions.

The foundational members of the consortium will also include Mynaric, a provider of in-space laser communications, Reflex Aerospace, a designer and manufacturer of various classes of satellite systems, and Isar Aerospace, a launch service provider for small and medium satellites.

Rovial intends to broaden the consortium to include a second tier of European suppliers of subsystems and components. The consortium’s first major milestone is the launch demonstration satellites in 2022. The project has been designed to support the three great priorities of the European Commission:

• (1) “Autonomy and sovereignty”, by relying on European technology for key components such as
• (2) The “Green Deal“ by offering sustainability with a highly-scalable constellation capable of delivering early services with as few as eight satellites
• (3) “Digitization” by incorporating cutting edge and state of the art software engineering and other satellite and terrestrial technologies to ensure efficient, reliable, and low-cost services to customers and end users

“We are extremely excited to be progressing this opportunity with our highly-regarded consortium partners and other European companies and expect to address all technological and operational challenges and begin to launch our innovative commercial service in Europe in 2023-2024 in line with European Commission objectives” said Raghu Das, co-founder of Rovial, a Paris-based startup founded by commercial space industry veterans.

“Of course, this is not something that just came up overnight,” added Mynaric CEO Bulent Altan. “Matter of fact, there has been activity in the background on this ever since European Commissioner Breton started his initiative more than a year ago, and I am happy to see that the paths are converging today.”

Orbital Space has announced that QMR-KWT is due to be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on June 24, 2021.

QMR-KWT – ‘Moon of Kuwait’ – translated from Arabic – is a 1U cubesat and will be Kuwait’s first smallsat. The smallsat’s functional testing has been completed at the EnduroSat facilities and the craft has been integrated with an ION Satellite Carrier, D-Orbit’s orbital transportation vehicle, as part of the plan to put it in orbit. QMR-KWT is now at SpaceX facilities waiting to be integrated with its Falcon 9 rocket in the coming days.

QMR-KWT mission control and ground station will be located at Dubai Digital Park, Dubai Silicon Oasis as part of the collaboration agreement between Orbital Space and the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) under the umbrella of MBRSC Space Ventures for startups. Established in August 2018, Orbital Space is the first company in the Arab World to provide access to space through cubesat technology. Orbital Space offers services to design, build, test and operate cubesats to students and amateurs to help them gain the know-how to build a satellite and to also support them if they want to engage in a space-related experiment.

“Our goal is to make space accessible to all, and as a startup, we are excited to work with other startups to meet our mutual objectives. Once in space, QMR-KWT will be the outcome of efforts from all young companies including Orbital Space, EnduroSat, D-Orbit, and even SpaceX, which is less than 20 years old company. The Falcon 9 mission — dubbed Transporter-2 rideshare mission — will carry several dozen satellites from the surface of the Earth to outer space at around 500 km above sea level in a sun synchronous orbit.” said Bassam Alfeeli, Founder and General Manager of Orbital Space.

According to Nada Alshammari, Director of Educational Programs at Orbital Space, QMR-KWT is an educational space mission and is already inspiring and empowering students to become the future professionals in the space sector. The main education mission of QMRKWT is ‘Code in Space.’ Nada added. “Code in Space is an opportunity for students to develop and test new software solutions by writing software code to be uploaded and executed on the satellite’s onboard computer – for the first time ever. We have been receiving proposals from students around the world and we invite students from everywhere to challenge themselves and connect with this unique opportunity.”