Recently, Korean Air announced the company will develop common bulkhead propellant tanks for smallsat launch vehicles as part of the Ministry of Science and ICT’s “Space Pioneer” project.

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to invest a total of KRW 211.5 billion by 2030 in the “Space Pioneer” project that aims to strengthen the global competitiveness of the domestic aerospace industry by reducing dependence on overseas products.

With a budget of KRW 32 billion, Korean Air has formed an industry and academic consortium with the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, NDT Engineering & Aerospace and Korea Aerospace University to develop common bulkhead propellant tanks for smallsat launch vehicles by 2026. The common bulkhead propellant tank combines fuel and oxidizer tanks into a single tank using the latest metal welding and insulation technology. This new technology will increase the competitiveness of the smallsat launch vehicle market in Korea, as it will reduce the number of satellite launch vehicle parts, simplify structures, decrease vehicle weights by 30%, and cut down production costs.

The common bulkhead propellant tank is expected to dramatically reduce the cost of sending 500 kg small- and medium-sized satellites or smallsat constellations into LEO.

On June 23, 20 engineers and officials from Korean Air, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, and NDT Engineering & Aerospace gathered at the Korean Air R&D Center in Daejeon to discuss development plans, a future roadmap and the scope of cooperation.

Korean Air will manage the risk and quality assurance system as well as testing and evaluation for certification. The developed common bulkhead propellant tank will be used as a major component of a 500 kg smallsat launch vehicle, which is to be developed by Korean Air and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute.

In 2012, Korean Air developed and assembled Korea’s first space launch vehicle, Naro (KSLV-1), and the company has core technology capabilities such as aircraft system integration and aircraft structure development.

HawkEye 360 Inc. has incorporated a new trawling behavior detection capability to the company SEAker , the company’s maritime domain awareness product — this feature is a part of a series of new functionalities to be added within the year that will enable organizations to more comprehensively minimize maritime risk and protect national interests.

Leveraging open fishing data, location data, and other fused maritime data sets, the deep learning algorithm can identify the underlying behaviors associated with trawling activity. SEAker analytics can similarly identify ship-to-ship rendezvous and “dark ship” activity, or vessels that do not broadcast Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmissions for extended periods of time. When correlated with HawkEye 360’s RFGeo analytics and fused contextual information, these detection capabilities create invaluable insight into the opaque maritime domain.

IUU fishing poses grave threats to global fish stocks and marine environments. The common practice of bottom trawling specifically can disrupt fragile ocean floor environments and capture significant amounts of by-catch, including sea turtles, dolphins, porpoises and more.

The economic consequences of IUU fishing are also significant. It is estimated to cost the seafood industry as much as $50 billion each year, cutting into the incomes of honest fishing businesses globally. IUU fishing operations are also frequently linked to forced labor and human rights abuses — confronting IUU fishing, therefore, could protect both the environment and vulnerable labor populations.

IUU fishing thrives on a complex, hard-to-regulate supply chain. With limited and varying regulations across the globe, legitimate maritime activity blends in with illegal activity. While AIS data could drastically improve visibility with strict enforcement, it does not account for vessels intentionally turning off the tracking devices so the depth of IUU fishing problems could be greater than public information suggests.

HawkEye 360’s growing constellation of satellites geolocate a diverse set of radio frequency signals emitted by ships, such as X-band and S-band marine navigation radars and VHF radios, offering a trusted way to independently validate vessel positions.

“In order to police the illegal activities of the vast ocean, the world needs — but does not yet have — timely, consistent, and actionable intelligence on illicit vessel behaviors across the globe,” said HawkEye 360 CEO John Serafini. “HawkEye 360 is proud to launch unparalleled commercial capabilities, made possible by our expanding constellation and analytics portfolio, that allow authorities worldwide to monitor and take action against bad actors involved in IUU fishing.”

“It’s a long, arduous task for analysts to manually and accurately identify fishing behavior. By automating pattern recognition, we’re saving analysts valuable time by providing those insights up front for them that may have otherwise been lost in the noise,” said Tim Pavlick, VP of Product, HawkEye 360. “Our maritime domain awareness solutions will now have an even more drastic impact in the fight against IUU fishing for our customers, helping them reliably identify illicit maritime activity and take appropriate action — including vessel interdictions and legal convictions.”

NanoAvionics was all geared up for the SpaceX Transporter-2 rideshare launch at the end of June, with several satellite missions from their customers that will have a positive impact on businesses and communities in remote regions on Earth, as well as pioneering an ionic liquid electrospray propulsion system. Among the applications onboard are also the world’s first, 1U-sized, hyperspectral imager and a new high-gain X-band antenna.

The first of the two smallsats, named “D2 / Atlacom-1,” that were onboard Transporter-2 was a shared 6U satellite mission dedicated to an on-orbit demonstration of new satellite technologies as well as several, novel, satellite applications. They included the world’s first 1U-sized hyperspectral imager to be ever flown, a new 1U tiled ionic liquid electrospray (TILE) propulsion system, a new high-gain X-band antenna and an upgraded X-Band downlink transmitter. The mission comprises “HyperActive,” an international consortium and its partners, and an electric propulsion demonstration by Accion Systems.

The generated data from HyperActive program will be used to develop solutions to improve agriculture yield and livestock, detection of changes in vegetation and pollutants as well as urban environments. For example, a hyperspectral sensor can ‘see’ the spectral signature of an invasive disease threatening an entire harvest, allowing farmers to take preventive steps.

Accion Systems said their TILE-3 propulsion system, sponsored by an ongoing US government propulsion program, is low-cost, compact, low pressure and has less than 50% of the power draw of other propulsion technologies and combines the use of safe, inert liquid propellant with a simple mechanical design and few moving parts.

“The ‘D-2/AtlaCom-1’ satellite contains hyperspectral technology payload and is an interesting case for successful and fast-pace space collaboration across three continents,” said F. Brent Abbott, CEO of NanoAvionics US. “It took us only eight months to build, test and launch the satellite even though hosting many different instruments onboard a shared satellite requires extensive configurations.”

The consortium partners for the mission, brought together through NanoAvionics’ shared satellite service, consisted of Dragonfly Aerospace from South Africa, Space JLTZ from Mexico and NanoAvionics US as a supplier to the consortium. It also included mission contributors Polytechnical University of Atlacomulco (Mexico) and CUBECOM (South Africa).

The second satellite is OQ Technology’s Tiger-2. Built by NanoAvionics,this satellite is also the second mission for NanoAvionics with the company. The 6U satellite will grow OQ Technology’s constellation, forming the first global 5G, Internet of Things (IoT) network that combines satellite and terrestrial wireless networks, using regular 5G chips in mobile devices.

OQ Technology’s constellation intends to provide basic commercial IoT and M2M Machine-to-Machine) services, using 5G connectivity, to customers with a focus on Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.The satellite will expand the 4G and 5G IoT footprint globally, which plays a critical role in enabling mobility in vertical markets such as smart cars, drones, transport, logistics and maritime. It is also very valuable for low latency applications (critical for 5G) as the satellites are in low earth orbit, and provide few milliseconds latency communication, which traditional GEO satellites operators cannot do. Following the launch of Tiger-2, OQ Technology aims to quickly add another two missions to its constellation, followed by a batch of six satellites.

“Both satellites onboard Transporter-2 were some of our quickest from-contract-to-orbit projects to date, and despite the pandemic and a shortfall of components that others have felt, NanoAvionics hasn’t had any supply shortage nor any delays in its lead times and production of satellite buses,” said Vytenis J. Buzas, co-founder and CEO of NanoAvionics. “We build 95 percent of our satellite subsystems in-house, and we have a controlled supply and stock of components and raw materials. That puts us in a good position, for now, to continue building our micro- and nanosatellite buses right on schedule.”

“With more satellite to follow, this mission is essential for OQ Technology to engage with customers and access the market to deliver full 5G services,” said Omar Qaise, CEO OQ Technology. “There will be 24 billion devices around the world to be connected, and we are well positioned for that market. In addition to Tiger-2, we are working with NanoAvionics on multiple other missions.”

Fugro’s SpaceStar GNSS Precise Point Positioning (PPP) service is providing essential, high-accuracy positioning in space for the first time — Loft Orbital, which flies and operates customer payloads on their YAM series of smallsats, launched their YAM-2 satellite, the first in space to be equipped with Fugro’s SpaceStar next-generation positioning technology, on June 30 into a 525 km SSO from Cape Canaveral in Florida onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

SpaceStar is using PPP to deliver high-accuracy, sub-decimeter, onboard positioning in real time during YAM-2’s LEO operations. Fugro’s proprietary positioning software is integrated into YAM-2 and employs state-of-the-art technology to receive precise GNSS real-time orbit and clock corrections from geostationary satellites. Highly accurate positioning in LEO is becoming increasingly important for EO applications, safe constellations management as well as space debris collision avoidance.

“We’re especially excited to demonstrate this new functionality,” said Loft Orbital CTO, Pieter van Duijn. “Fugro’s SpaceStar service is something that can really help not only Loft Orbital’s missions but also be of interest to the wider application of space situational awareness and safety.”

Daan Scheer, Fugro’s Satellite Positioning Commercial Manager, said, “We are extremely proud to be providing our real-time PPP service to the YAM-2 small satellite. We’ve been able to bring this innovative product to market thanks to our close cooperation with Loft Orbital and we’re looking forward to completing a successful in-orbit demonstration mission. The accuracy of our SpaceStar position service is not only contributing to our purpose of a safe and livable world but, by facilitating safer navigation in space, even beyond.”

Infostellar Inc. is collaborating with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) to make AWS Ground Station available within StellarStation. The combination will give satellite operators more opportunities to communicate with their space workloads, downlink geospatial data faster and easier, and decrease the time it takes to get data to decision makers on Earth. Infostellar also plans to leverage AWS for customer integration, testing and other onboarding activities to reduce the time it takes to scale successful operations across a global ground network.

Satellite operators require an increasingly large, global footprint of satellite antennas and expansive ground networks to get decision makers the most recent satellite data and track and manage fast-changing conditions. Larger ground coverage areas also provide satellite operators with more options to downlink their data during each orbit.

The AWS Ground Station network allows customers to cost-effectively control satellite operations, ingest satellite data, integrate the data with applications and other services running in AWS, and scale operations without having to worry about building or managing their own ground infrastructure.

StellarStation gives satellite operators a common interface to leverage ground stations from a variety of providers around the globe so they can schedule satellite passes and monitor and exchange data in a standard manner.

Now, with AWS and Infostellar, is required to scale globally in the cloud because operators do not need to send engineers to each site around the world. Instead, they can reuse their integration and test efforts across multiple global sites simultaneously.

The combination of AWS Ground Station and StellarStation helps satellite operators to provide customers with near real-time data through an expanded ground coverage area, including an automated ground network with virtual data and mission management capabilities.

Through the API integration of AWS Ground Station on StellarStation, customers will be able to schedule contacts across both ground networks from a single scheduling interface and specify data endpoints in their AWS Management Console or in their own data reception facility.

Using AWS Ground Station, Infostellar customers can immediately access AWS storage, compute, and analytics services, such as Amazon Simple Storage Services (Amazon S3), to store the downloaded data; Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, for managing data ingestion from satellites; and Amazon SageMaker for building custom machine learning applications that can be applied to a wide variety of data sets.

Customer onboarding, including spectrum licensing, will be coordinated between the two ground operators. Among initial customers of AWS Ground Station on StellarStation mission control software could be Japan-based space start-up ALE Co, Ltd.

“Leveraging AWS Ground Station allows Infostellar to expand our infrastructure very rapidly with the addition of key locations to our global network of ground stations. AWS also shows the benefits of our cloud-based ground service aggregation platform, StellarStation, to the global community of spacecraft operators,” said Naomi Kurahara, Infostellar CEO. “With Infostellar and AWS, satellite customers can migrate their workloads to AWS in order to benefit from its agility, cost savings, elasticity, and global connectivity.”

“We are excited to provide AWS Ground Station services through Infostellar. AWS Ground Station makes it easy for customers to communicate with their satellites and quickly move data around the globe, process and store it in the AWS cloud. StellarStation customers can schedule satellite contacts at AWS Ground Station locations around the world and take advantage of Amazon’s low-latency, high-bandwidth global network to deliver data.” said Jim Caggy, General Manager, AWS Ground Station.

“The combination of AWS Ground Station and InfoStellar’s StellarStation mission control software will provide satellite operators with more frequent communication with their satellites. This collaboration will allow us to better schedule shooting star events for the ALE man-made shooting star experience and provide more flexible options for our customers. This combination is very important to us here at ALE; we look forward to it helping us delight customers all over the world,” said Lena Okajima, CEO, ALE Co, Ltd.

Fleet Space Technologies launched their sixth smallsat — Centauri 4— aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 “Transporter-2” mission that launched on June 30, EST.

In a world first, according to the company, C4 – which is only the size of a shoebox – has been integrated with digital beamforming technology, making this Fleet Space’s, and the world’s, most advanced smallsat payload yet delivered to orbit.

The payload includes a highly innovative, lightweight ,beam-steering antenna, AI-driven computer server and satellite modem, all designed in-house by the Fleet team. These features will help transform the ability of worldwide industry to manage and control in real time their emote assets, through the IoT communications payload onboard as well as connect thousands of sensors monitoring critical infrastructure across the world in real time, 24 hours a day.

Centauri 4 was one of 88 government, military and commercial satellites released at 525 km into LEO on the “Transporter-2” mission, pushed toward an SSO, pole-to-pole, Earth orbit.

With the ability to shape and steer multiple beams in their smallsats, and therefore reduce interference, Fleet Space can perform more work, transfer more data and do it in flexible and secure ways that have never before been possible at this scale. This sovereign capability in communication from space in smallsats has already attracted the attention of key world players including the defense community, with this launch positioning Fleet Space and Australia at the forefront of providing innovative communications technologies from space.

The Fleet Space smallsats are servicing IoT customers who will reap the rewards of collecting and organizing vast amounts of data from every remote corner of the Earth. Critical infrastructure customer use cases include tracking power outages, receiving alerts of unwanted encroachments along easements and bushfire risks, through to applications in defence, mining and logistics.

This launch is the second successful one this year for Fleet Space, as the firm plans on a further 16 smallsast being launched during 2022 and 2023. With a planned constellation of 140 smallsats to be established by 2027, about 50 will need replacement every year as their LEO decay, and this could generate a lifetime revenue of $1.82 billion.

CEO Flavia Tata Nardini said, “in only a few hours we have managed to launch our nanosatellite, catch our nanosatellite in its first pass and then switch on its payload. This usually takes weeks if not up to a month, so to achieve this in only a few hours, I am blown away. This act demonstrates how efficient the team is here at Fleet Space and working with our avionics partner Tyvak International, to enable this switching on only hours after launch. The agility of our product is incredible, and we are ‘business as usual’ this afternoon as we continue to service our global customers.”

Original report…

Fleet Space Technologies will launch their sixth smallsat, Centauri 4 (C4), aboard SpaceX Falcon9 on Saturday morning , June 26, at 4:26 a.m., Adelaide, Australia, time, with the US launch occurring at Cape Canaveral. 

To be delivered into orbit at 450 km above the Earth, Centauri 4 is the size of a shoebox and has been integrated with digital beamforming technology, making this Fleet Space’s most advanced payload. This is a major achievement for the company to incorporate this tech in a smallsat payload, due to the small craft’s power and volume constraints, and this will allow for substantial increases in throughput of customer data, service a higher number of customer portals at once as well as increase data reliability and security by reducing the impact of interference. C4 will implement Fleet Space’s first 3D printed antenna system, completely designed in-house.

Fleet Space has released a video explaining the achievements of their beamforming team at this direct vlink…

“Space is no longer the sole domain of governments and multi-billion dollar satellites. Space is open for business, and we’re only just starting to tap into what is possible,” said Fleet Space CEO Flavia Tata Nardini. “With our digital beamforming technology, we are changing space and making it accessible. With a crowded radio spectrum containing all of the world’s wireless communications, bandwidth efficiency is everything. Our engineers have managed to fit this incredible technology in the vacuum of space on a tiny nanosat. This is where Fleet Space’s technology makes it world first. I have been working and launching nanosatellites for more than 10 years now and I have never been so excited by a technological breakthrough such as this latest generation of the payload. This and the new 3D printed antennas that my amazing team have built at Fleet Space. We can finally demonstrate how powerful nanosatellites can be in the comms world. We call this payload the Knight. Look at it, you can understand why!”

Additionally, there is a 2nd experimental payload which will have an even greater increase in data capacity — this new generation payload is a huge milestone in the company’s planned constellation of 140 smallsats.

Now with the ability to shape and steer multiple beams in their nanosatellites and, therefore, reduce interference, Fleet Space can perform more work, transfer more data and do it in flexible and secure ways never before possible at this scale. The firm’s smallsats are servicing IoT customers who will reap the rewards of collecting and organizing vast amounts of data from every remote corner of the Earth. Critical infrastructure customer use cases include tracking power outages, receiving alerts of unwanted encroachments along easements and bushfire risks, through to applications in defence, mining and logistics. 

Fleet Space already has five smallsats on-orbit in their LEO constellation. With significant growth in the company’s development of cutting-edge technologies, the company’s capabilities of their agnostic hybrid satellite, low-powered, wide area network (LPWAN) are being used for the development of remote, massive, IoT applications, on the Earth, the Moon and Mars, through the firm’s Seven Sisters Lunar Mission. 

Watch the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch at this direct link on June 26…

Kleos Space S.A (ASX:KSS, Frankfurt:KS1) has appointed co-founder Miles Ashcroft to the role of Chief Innovation Officer to oversee the company’s research and innovation activity.

Mr Ashcroft’s appointment to the newly created role follows the launch of Kleos’ Scouting Mission satellites (KSM1) in November of 2020, the launch of the company’s Polar Vigilance Mission (KSF1) satellites in July of 2021 and the development of the third cluster scheduled to launch later this year (KSF2).

Kleos CEO, Andy Bowyer, said, “We are committed to investing in new technology developments to meet customers evolving needs and Miles’ new role brings a focus to this approach. The forward-looking role aims to broaden our R&D and innovation roadmap and be fully integrated with and enhance our business development strategy.”

Commenting on his new role, Chief Innovation Officer Miles Ashcroft said, “Kleos has reached a significant technical milestone with an increasing number of space-based assets for detection and geolocation of radio frequency transmissions. Initial data is with customers for assessment and implementation of the data interface and delivery infrastructure is being developed to support our growing subscriber numbers over the coming months. I’m very excited by the new role, which requires a holistic approach that takes into account satellite and data product diversity, new software methods and algorithms, data intelligence provision capability, and Kleos’ constellation use and satellite cluster interaction.”

Kleos’ US-based Technical Director, Vincent (Vinny) Furia, has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer, effective concurrently.