Archives for February 2022

The Sultanate of Oman and the US-based launch company Virgin Orbit; Polish Small Satellite manufacturer and operator SatRevolution; Poland-originated AI data analytics specialists TUATARA; and Omani-based emerging technology innovator ETCO, have together signed a Memorandum of Understanding for collaboration on Oman’s first mission to deep space. The same agreement also lays the foundation for the consortium to collaborate on delivering additional small satellites to Low Earth Orbit, including the first in Oman’s history.

As part of the historic deep space mission, the group plans to launch a satellite designed by SatRevolution aboard a Virgin Orbit rocket, sending it to deep space with the mission of conducting cutting-edge scientific research and capturing high-resolution imagery. All collected data and images, both from the Low Earth Orbit and deep space missions, will be further analyzed digitally using computer vision, machine learning, and AI solutions developed by TUATARA in strategic partnership with ETCO. This mission will collect valuable data regarding the hidden patterns that underlie climate change, and the aftereffects of natural disasters. In addition, it could provide scientists with essential information needed to understand what occurs on the surface of Earth’s neighbors.

The final mission parameters and scientific objectives will be determined in a study conducted by the parties to the mission, and thereafter the parties expect to sign a definitive binding agreement to conduct the mission. The mission is the follow-on to the Memorandum of Understanding signed during International Astronautical Congress held in October 2021 in Dubai, which established the cooperation of the Parties to design, manufacture and launch the first Omani satellite, manufactured by SatRevolution and onboard Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne, on the first ever launch from the United Kingdom out of Spaceport Cornwall in 2022. The launch from Cornwall and subsequent missions to deep space will be enabled through Virgin Orbit’s versatile air launched system. The Cornwall mission providing the first Oman Satellite in Space sets the foundation for allowing previously non-space faring nations the ability to launch satellites from their own soil, which is a key element of the Oman strategy for Space.

As an emerging space-faring nation with plans to launch small satellites into Low Earth Orbit and foster a local, sustainable space ecosystem and industrial base, the Sultanate of Oman further plans on expanding its ambitious space endeavors and engaging the Omani public and students through STEM activities.

Both missions are in line with the Royal Directives of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said and will directly correspond with the “Oman Vision 2040”, being part of a broader educational outreach initiative with the goal of stimulating long-term growth in the sector. The activities specified in the Agreements are intended to generate and seize opportunities to foster economic competitiveness and social well-being, stimulate growth, and build confidence in economic, social, and developmental relations nationwide.

“Only a few nations have been bold enough to venture into deep space, but with Oman’s strong vision supported by cutting edge launch and spacecraft technology another spacefaring nation is about to join those ranks,” said Virgin Orbit’s CEO Dan Hart. “We are proud to have been entrusted by the Sultanate of Oman as their exclusive launch partner in helping to fulfill the goals of bringing sustainable space solutions to Oman. Beginning with the launch of the first Omani satellites out of the first UK launch this year, the progression has been set for a myriad of space missions to expand technology, science and exploration.”

“Both projects will contribute to the near-term goals of the Sultanate of Oman which include the modernization of the educational ecosystem, growth in the support of scientific research and innovation, enhancement of the in-house development of cutting-edge technologies, which will shape the world in the twenty-first century.” SatRevolution’s CEO Grzegorz Zwolinski said

“The future of the Sultanate of Oman is one of innovation, and it’s through partnerships with pioneering organizations like Virgin Orbit that we will make active contributions to those sectors and technologies that are driving progress on a global scale,” Tariq Al Belushi, ETCO Vice President said. “This partnership is a major step in helping us to enrich the Sultanate’s Space industry with the latest technologies and know-how, while adding overall economic value according to Oman’s 2040 Vision.”

“Our mission is to deliver enchanting experiences in the digital space and we are thrilled we were invited to help translate outer space data into digital. We believe that the Oman project will not only be providing vital scientific data and boosting the growth of STEM industry in the Sultanate but will also inspire the world in the further democratization of the space research.” TUATARA’s Chief Innovation Officer Krzysztof Goworek concluded.

In recognition of great importance of the Agreement to the Sultanate of Oman, his excellency Dr. Ali Al Shidani – Undersecretary for Communications and Information Technology at the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, Sultanate of Oman witnessed the signing of this MOU by the Parties at a signing ceremony in Muscat.

OneWeb and Marlink have joined forces to bring OneWeb’s high-speed, low latency connectivity to the maritime, energy, enterprise and humanitarian sectors.

Marlink operates a global industry-leading VSAT network and has unrivaled market access providing remote communications across the maritime, offshore and onshore energy, enterprise and humanitarian sectors. In partnership with OneWeb, Marlink will further enhance the capabilities of its hybrid network solutions and offer its customers truly differentiated, flexible, reliable and secure connectivity solutions, optimized for every application.

The two companies plan to concentrate on the energy sector in regions above the 50th parallel north from January 2022, expanding to the maritime, energy, enterprise and humanitarian sectors on a global scale from January 2023.

Together, OneWeb and Marlink will deploy, test and demonstrate several types of user terminals and LEO connectivity services to customers across these market segments.

OneWeb is making significant progress in building its constellation and currently has 394 satellites in LEO, representing more than 60% of its planned fleet, delivering connectivity to customers in remote regions of Alaska, Canada and the North Sea. Launches will continue during 2022 to enable the company to offer commercial connectivity services globally for maritime in 2023.

Alexandre de Luca, President Energy, Enterprise and Government at Marlink, said:, “We are delighted to be working with OneWeb to deliver a new global, high-speed, low latency connectivity solution that is in strong demand by our remote communication customers across the market segments we serve.”

Tore Morten Olsen, President Maritime at Marlink, said, “Together with OneWeb, we will significantly improve Marlink’s hybrid connectivity solutions for our energy and maritime customers. Adding OneWeb’s capabilities will further enhance our smart hybrid network to support the digitalization of our customers’ remote operations, and in particular to enable our customers’ cloud applications.”

Carole Plessy, OneWeb’s Vice President of Maritime, said, “OneWeb is building a new generation of business broadband services, powered by Low Earth Orbit satellites to create a truly global connectivity network to the high seas. OneWeb, together with Marlink connectivity solutions, will allow the maritime industry a pathway to digitalization, both on and offshore. Marlink is the highly respected industry leader and we are delighted to be introducing the first steps in our partnership to the industry.”

Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIDU), a Space-as-a-Service satellite company, has engaged in a strategic partnership with Red Canyon Software, Inc. (Red Canyon) to support the company’s LizzieSat constellation of 100 smallsats.

Through this partnership, Red Canyon will support the design, development, assembly, integration, deployment and sustainment of LizzieSat constellation, with its software solutions.

LizzieSats (LS) are 3D manufactured LEO smallsats that are focused on rapid, cost-effective development and testing of upcoming innovative spacecraft technologies for multiple customers. LS is a 100 kg. (220 pound) satellite with space to rapidly integrate customer sensors and technologies.

Red Canyon is an engineering and software development company that provides cutting-edge technology to help government agencies and customers explore space and other planets.

Barry Hamilton, Red Canyon Founder and CEO, said, “The Red Canyon team could not be more thrilled to work alongside Sidus Space to develop the LizzieSat spacecraft and LEO constellation. LizzieSat will help space entrepreneurs access space at low cost so that they can scale their business model and achieve higher and quicker ROI on their capital investment.”

“Red Canyon brings significant space-rated software lifecycle development experience to the LizzieSat team and will be a key strategic partner for the LizzieSat constellation. The strength and experience that Red Canyon brings to our software engineering team will help us rapidly deliver cost-effective LizzieSat capabilities to our growing customer base,” said Carol Craig, Founder and CEO of Sidus Space.

Red Canyon develops cutting-edge technology to help humankind explore space and other planets, as well as advanced renewable resources on Earth and the rejuvenation of low-income areas through the HUBZone program. Red Canyon is involved with important missions ranging from exploring the poles of Jupiter, the next Mars lander, bringing back the first sample from an asteroid, and building the next human spacecraft to go to the Moon and Mars. Clients include government agencies such as NASA, NREL, NOAA, and DOD, in addition to customers such as Lockheed Martin Space, Raytheon, Sierra Space, a.i. solutions, Walt Disney Imagineering, SAIC, Ball Aerospace, SpaceX, Honeywell, KBRwyle, Maxar, Blue Origin, and Moog.

Sidus Space, located in Cape Canaveral, Florida, operates from a 35,000 square-foot manufacturing, assembly, integration, and testing facility. Sidus Space focuses on commercial satellite design, manufacture, launch, and data collection, with a mission of Bringing Space Down to Earth and a vision of enabling space flight heritage status for new technologies while delivering data and predictive analytics to domestic and global customers. Sidus Space makes it easy for any corporation, industry, or vertical to start their journey off-planet with our rapidly scalable, low-cost satellite services, space-based solutions, and testing alternatives. More than just a “Satellite-as-a-Service” provider, trhe company becomes a Mission Partner from concept to LEO and beyond. Sidus is ISO 9001:2015, AS9100 Rev. D certified, and ITAR registered.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: KTOS) has engaged in a strategic partnership with Kymeta to jointly develop products and solutions that will enable modern, virtualized, ground systems to better leverage the capabilities of next generation, mobile, satellite antennas.

Among the broader goals of the partnership are to advance the ability of ground systems to support, leverage, manage, and control electronically-steered and multi-purpose antennas to better support the capabilities of software-defined and multi-beam satellites. This effort will initially focus on joint development of a software-defined remote terminal that will support a variety of dynamic satellite connectivity applications, including support for multi-orbit use cases where connectivity to LEO, MEO, and GEO satellites through the same antenna are desirable.

The space industry is immersed in a renaissance, driven by technology breakthroughs such as smallsats, proliferated LEO constellations, software-defined payloads, multi-orbit services, and more. On the ground, commensurate advances in satellite networks are occurring, as witnessed by the growth of ground-as-a-service providers, mobile communications-on-the-move, and virtualized ground systems. These advances at both ends of the space/ground connection mean that satellite systems must come to act more dynamically, adapting on-the-fly to changing needs, conditions, service levels, and business or mission requirements.

The Digitally-Transformed Remote Terminal will combine a Kymeta ESA with a software-defined uCPE (Universal Customer Premises Equipment) based on Kratos OpenSpace technology, all in a unified terminal package. The OpenSpace Platform is the first and only commercially available software-defined and orchestrated ground system that allows satellite and communications operators to advance the digital transformation of their satellite networks.

In order to deliver a solution that dynamically adapts to changes at the space layer while also supporting multiple functions at the network’s edge, the jointly developed products will conform to industry standards, including the IEEE-ISTO Std 4900-2021: Digital IF Interoperability Standard, v1.0 from the Digital IF Interoperability (DIFI) Consortium (DIFI). Both companies believe that common standards are essential for the space industry to realize the opportunities on the horizon and to advance the industry’s integration with the larger global communications infrastructure. Both are founding members of DIFI, an independent organization created to develop and promote standards for interoperability in space and satellite systems.

According to Greg Quiggle, Vice President of Space Product Management at Kratos, “This modem/antenna interface assumes an analog, static, one-for-one relationship at a time when the space layer has evolved to include highly dynamic multi-orbit networks and software-defined payloads. Remote terminals must digitally transform, embracing the unique capabilities of electronically steered antennas (ESA) and universal customer premise equipment (uCPE) to dynamically enable multi-beam, multi-band, and multi-use at the network edge.”

“Kymeta is excited to partner with Kratos, a leader in the space network virtualization revolution, to jointly develop a digital ground terminal that leverages the Kymeta u8 antenna technology,” said Lilac Muller, Kymeta’s Vice President of Product Management. “The Kymeta u8 is a software-defined platform that unlocks the potential of future capabilities in both terrestrial and space-based networks in geostationary and non-geostationary orbits.”

Additionally, Kratos is enhancing their Earth Observation & Remote Sensing Service Chain (EO/RS SC) for their OpenSpace Platform. The new release adds features that enable satellite operators and Ground Station-as-a-Service (GSaaS) providers to increase automation, accelerate deployment times and further optimize operating and capital expenditures.

The OpenSpace Platform is the first fully virtualized and orchestrated satellite ground system. Service chains, such as the EO/RS SC, run on the OpenSpace Platform to seamlessly integrate and automate the tasks of service delivery in a fully virtual environment. The new release of the EO/RS SC enables customers to support the current and next generation of EO/RS satellites by providing fully orchestrated Telemetry, Tracking, and Command (TT&C), high-throughput wideband data downlink and packet processing of mission data.

Kratos’ OpenSpace family of solutions enables the digital transformation of satellite ground systems to become a more dynamic and powerful part of the space network. The family consists of three product lines: OpenSpace SpectralNet for converting satellite RF signals to be used in digital environments; OpenSpace quantum products, which are virtual versions of traditional hardware components; and the OpenSpace Platform, the first commercially available, fully orchestrated, software-defined ground system. These three OpenSpace lines enable satellite operators and other service providers to implement digital operations at their own pace and in ways that meet their unique mission goals and business models.

Addressing the intensive bandwidth needs of today’s missions, the EO/RS SC delivers more than a gigabit-per-second of downlink throughput. It does so running solely on commercially available, off-the-shelf x86-based computers without specialized hardware or enhancements. Operators can deploy and reconfigure these service chains in minutes running in public cloud, private data center environments or hybrid cloud environments.

“The new, enhanced capabilities of the OpenSpace EO/RS SC and the ability to orchestrate those functions within the OpenSpace Platform dramatically lower the cost of downlinks, while raising the performance for missions,” said Christopher Boyd, Senior Director of Product Management at Kratos. “Virtual TT&C modems, wideband receivers, and stream processing/recorders are orchestrated as a service chain along with the automated configuration of physical functions such as digitizers and antenna control systems to support fully automated EO sensing mission services from the antenna all the way to post satellite pass processing.”

In its third dedicated rideshare mission with SpaceX, Exolaunch, global provider of launch, in-space logistics and deployment services, successfully integrated and launched 29 small satellites from customers across the globe. The company’s rideshare clusters aboard the SpaceX Transporter-3 mission were an amalgamation of microsats, cubesats (up to 16U) and PocketQubes. The combination of customers from 17 countries across four continents, and an unprecedented number of very sophisticated payloads made it the most technologically rich and geographically spread integration effort for the company yet.

Exolaunch’s rideshare customers’ payloads have top-notch technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT), Maritime Surveillance, Ultra HD Video Streaming, Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) Earth Observation, and Science and Education.

The eclectic company medley incorporated returning customers such as NanoAvionics and ICEYE, as well as many notable new customers such as Sen, Unseenlabs, Lunasonde, NuSpace, FOSSA Systems and Alba Orbital. The companies behind this plethora of satellites are based in the USA, Finland, Great Britain, France, Lithuania, Spain, Scotland, Singapore, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Israel, Nepal, the Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, and the UAE.
The launch of these 29 satellites brought the total number of satellites sent to space by Exolaunch close to two hundred.

“Never before have we integrated such a variety of satellites for a single mission,” said Connor Jonas, mission director at Exolaunch.  

This mission was also the third in a series of rideshare launches, which Exolaunch is manifesting on Falcon 9 as part of a Multi-Launch Agreement, which the company first signed with SpaceX in 2020 and extended at the end of 2021. For every Falcon 9 launch procured through this agreement, Exolaunch provides an end-to-end solution encompassing comprehensive rideshare mission management, satellite integration, and deployment services. Exolaunch has launched 59 satellites weighing nearly 1,500 kg on SpaceX’s first two record-breaking dedicated rideshare Transporter missions in 2021.  

To maximize payload capacity and cost-effectiveness for their customers, Exolaunch used its recent product addition, EXOport, a flexible multi-satellite adapter designed to optimally accommodate microsats and cubesats on a single Falcon 9 port. Exolaunch also used its proprietary flight-proven separation systems CarboNIX, a next generation shock-free separation system, that to date has successfully separated 24 microsats, and the EXOpod, Exolaunch’s upgraded deployer with a heritage of 139 deployed cubesats.

Michael Tolstoj, mission director at Exolaunch said, “Transporter-3 was another remarkable mission illustrating what our business is all about: Bringing together an unprecedented variety of technology from an ever-growing number of nations to help people shape the future of the planet with their ideas. It shows that our service is recognized by industry leaders as well as a growing base of recurring and new customers. Once again, our team has demonstrated technical creativity paired with a keen sense for the needs of our customers and the zeitgeist of the industry. And this is just the beginning.”

Starting next year, as a result of the entry of the Reliant orbital transfer vehicle into the space tug market, Exolaunch will be able to meet some of the most ambitious requirements of its customers who wish to deploy satellite constellations to custom orbits by adjusting altitude, inclination, LTAN (longitude of the ascending node), and performing orbital phasing. Reliant is designed to deorbit shortly after deployment completion, minimizing the risks of space collisions and mitigating orbital debris. Future generations of Reliant will also be able to perform on-demand active debris removal.