A Scottish rocket manufacturer and orbital launch services provider is to build and operate the first vertical launch site for satellites on the UK mainland.

Orbex, based in Forres, Moray, Scotland, has signed a lease with development agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) for the spaceport location on community-owned land on the A’ Mhoine peninsula in north-west Sutherland.

HIE has been developing launch plans for several years and leases the site from Melness Crofters’ Estate. The sub-lease with Orbex will run for 50 years, with an option to extend for a further 25 years.

Orbex will oversee the construction and assume full operational management of the new facility. The 10-acre launch site will become the long-term ‘home’ spaceport of Orbex and will see the launch of as many as 12 orbital rockets per year, carrying satellites into LEO.

Orbex’s role in the spaceport will stimulate significant private investment that will benefit the local community through job creation, supply chain opportunities and other associated economic benefits. Total private investment over the initial three-year period is expected to reach £20 million.

In addition to increased opportunities for local businesses and contractors as part of the spaceport’s construction, Orbex expects to create up to 40 technical and non-technical FTE jobs to support the operation and maintenance of the site. The roles will span a number of areas including facilities and operational management, security, general administration and finance, marketing, stakeholder engagement and launch campaign-related roles. Employment opportunities will be advertised locally when recruitment commences.

HIE identified the potential for the Highlands and Islands to play a significant role in the UK’s growing space sector several years ago, recognizing that rural locations that are close to coasts and have a northern latitude can make ideal satellite launch sites.

With the backing of the UK Space Agency, HIE set to work developing plans for the Sutherland spaceport in 2018, with specialist input from architects NORR and construction consultants Gardiner and Theobald. At the same time, HIE commissioned detailed environmental studies to inform a broad range of protection measures around the site.

Planning permission was granted by the Highland Council in August of 2020. A separate development application to the Scottish Land Court – which was required as the launch site is on crofting land – was also successful.

Following its recent participation in Orbex’s Series C funding round, it has been confirmed that global technology-forward solutions company, Jacobs, will assume the role of prime construction contractor on behalf of Orbex. Jacobs will collaborate with Orbex to provide spaceport operations support, operations consultancy, and engineering services, drawing on its experience of managing and operating complex, highly regulated sites such as Cape Canaveral in the United States. Jacobs is NASA’s largest services provider, delivering mission-tailored solutions and full lifecycle aerospace capabilities including the Mars Perseverance Rover and the Artemis deep space human exploration program.

Overseeing the construction and operational management of the new spaceport will allow Orbex to streamline the development of the state-of-the-art facility, drafting in industry experts such as Jacobs to help meet its objectives. Sutherland Spaceport is intended to become the world’s greenest spaceport, both in terms of its construction and its operation. One illustration of this is how peat lifted during the construction will be re-used to repair large areas of peatland that have degraded over centuries.

Uniquely, the new Orbex Prime rocket is powered by a renewable biofuel, Futuria Liquid Gas, supplied by Calor. This fuel allows the rocket to reduce carbon emissions significantly compared to other similarly sized rockets being developed elsewhere around the world.

A study by the University of Exeter showed that a single launch of the Orbex Prime rocket will produce 96 percent lower carbon emissions than comparable space launch systems using fossil fuels. Prime is also a re-usable rocket which has been engineered to leave zero debris on Earth and on-orbit. Orbex has already received a great deal of interest from commercial satellite manufacturers and has signed launch contracts with a number of customers.

Chris Larmour, the CEO of Orbex, said, “We are very grateful for the work that HIE and the Melness Crofters Estate have done, in getting us to the point where we can take the baton and start construction. We have collaborated closely with them over the past few years, and we are completely aligned in our vision of delivering a sustainable spaceport that will bring jobs and prosperity to the region. Orbex is the first European launcher company to also manage a dedicated spaceport. It is an important competitive advantage to the company, which will make it really easy for us to work with customers as we scale up our operations.”

David Oxley, Director of Strategic Projects, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, said, “The space industry represents a huge economic opportunity for the Highlands and Islands and for Scotland. The steps we’ve taken to establish launch capability in Sutherland have already delivered a significant economic impact as a key factor in attracting Orbex to establish their manufacturing facility and test site in Moray, creating dozens of skilled jobs, with many more in the pipeline. We believe the spaceport has the capacity to generate around 250 jobs in our region, including 40 on site, plus opportunities in manufacturing, supply chain, research and service provision. With Orbex now set to build and operate the spaceport, we’ve reached a key stage in our partnership that will not only see launches happening from Sutherland but a whole range of wider economic benefits delivered for the Highlands and Islands.”

Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIDU) has signed an agreement with Dawn Aerospace (“Dawn”) to implement the latter’s green, chemical propulsion technology into the company’s LizzieSat smallsat.

Among the novel characteristics of Sidus Space’s proprietary LizzieSat is that its size allows Sidus to include propulsion and provide precision pointing and maneuvering otherwise not available to smaller cubesats. Additionally, propulsion provides a longer life on-orbit and that means continued data transfer and revenue opportunity. Each LizzieSat is 100 kg. with approximately 20 kg. dedicated to payloads including remote sensing instruments. The larger mass also allows design for redundancy and reliability into the spacecraft.

Dawn is a space transportation company, specializing in non-toxic chemical satellite propulsion and sustainable space launch. Dawn has provided in-space propulsion products – used to propel satellites – to customers globally since 2019.

“We are excited to partner with Dawn Aerospace on this important feature for our LizzieSat constellation. We believe Dawn’s turnkey propulsion technology will allow us to extend our time in orbit and deliver on our future value proposition of providing space-based data to a multitude of industries,” said Carol Craig, Sidus Space Founder and CEO.

“We look forward to partnering with Sidus Space to enable propulsion for their missions,” said Jeroen Wink, Dawn Co-founder. “Sidus is one of many customers we are providing propulsion to as demand for space products and services continues to grow.”

Sidus Space (NASDAQ: SIDU), located in Cape Canaveral, Florida, operates from a 35,000-square-foot manufacturing, assembly, integration, and testing facility focused on commercial satellite design, manufacture, launch, and data collection. The company’s rich heritage includes the design and manufacture of many flight and ground component parts and systems for various space-related customers and programs. Sidus Space has a broad range of Space-As-a-Service offerings including space-rated hardware manufacturing, design engineering, satellite manufacturing and platform development, launch and support services, data analytics services and satellite constellation management.

Dawn Aerospace’s mission is to enable the next generation of space users by providing dramatically more scalable and sustainable ways to access and move around in space. It is now a leading supplier of turnkey green propulsion systems for NanoSat, MicroSat, ESPA, and ESPA Grande-class satellites. Dawn is also active in reusable launch vehicle development, with an active test flight program of the Mk-II Aurora spaceplane demonstrator, with 30+ flights completed.

Spire Global, Inc. has been awarded a contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to deliver a preliminary design for a satellite that would carry an array of sensors to Very Low Earth orbit (VLEO) for in-situ ionosphere measurements.

The award is part of DARPA’s Ouija program, which aims to use sensors on satellites to provide new insights into high-frequency (HF) radio wave propagation in the ionosphere, the area spanning the upper edges of the Earth’s atmosphere to the lower regions of space. The program seeks to quantify the space HF noise environment and improve characterization of the ionosphere to support novel HF capabilities.

DARPA’s award uses Spire’s Space Services model, which offers organizations fast and scalable access to space through a subscription model that eliminates the high upfront cost of building and maintaining infrastructure in space. Organizations can leverage Spire’s established space, ground, and web infrastructure to deploy and operate a constellation of satellites, a hosted payload, or a software application in space. Spire handles the end-to-end management, from manufacturing to launch to satellite operations, and the customer operates the system through a web API.

Recently, the company was also awarded a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) contract for its Space Services to develop a sensor with hyperspectral microwave sensing technology on a 16U satellite to collect near real-time weather observations and improve measurements.

“Spire is proud to be supporting DARPA’s efforts to advance our understanding of the ionosphere. Spire has built and launched over 150 satellites in the decade since the company was founded, and we’re excited to bring that heritage and experience in ionospheric data collection to this project,” said Kamal Arafeh, Senior Vice President of Sales, Spire. “For innovative programs like Ouija, the Space Services model provides a fast and cost-effective platform to build and scale new technology in space.”

Spire (NYSE: SPIR) is a leading global provider of space-based data, analytics and space services, offering access to unique datasets and powerful insights about Earth from the ultimate vantage point so that organizations can make decisions with confidence, accuracy, and speed. Spire uses one of the world’s largest multipurpose satellite constellations to source hard to acquire, valuable data and enriches it with predictive solutions. Spire then provides this data as a subscription to organizations around the world so they can improve business operations, decrease their environmental footprint, deploy resources for growth and competitive advantage, and mitigate risk. Spire gives commercial and government organizations the competitive advantage they seek to innovate and solve some of the world’s toughest problems with insights from space. Spire has offices in San Francisco, Boulder, Washington DC, Ontario, Glasgow, Oxfordshire, Luxembourg, and Singapore.

NorthStar Earth & Space‘s first three of the firm’s constellation of 24 satellites dedicated to commercial Space Situational Awareness (SSA) will be among the payloads carried by Spire Global’s satellites to be launched by Virgin Orbit — the launch is scheduled for mid-2023.

NorthStar will be the first to monitor all near-Earth orbits from space, delivering an enhanced level of SSA services to the global satellite community, with timely and precise information for resident space object detection, tracking, orbit determination, collision avoidance, navigation and proximity alerts.

“NorthStar is proud to join forces with both Spire Global and Virgin Orbit for this historic first launch, as part of a vibrant community committed to advancing innovation in the service of space sustainability and the secure growth of the space economy,” said Stewart Bain, CEO and Founder of NorthStar Earth & Space. “NorthStar is committed to making a meaningful contribution to the peaceful and sustainable use of space. We deliver valuable information that enhances the detection and precision tracking of space objects across all near-Earth orbits to support sustainability, greater safety, and confidence in space operations.”

“Virgin Orbit is delighted to play a role in this ground-breaking mission,” said Virgin Orbit CEO, Dan Hart. “The proliferation of space debris and emerging threats in orbit necessitate responsive space domain awareness via space-based platforms. By working with NorthStar and Spire to deploy this innovative technology to a precise, targeted orbit via our proven LauncherOne system, we are fulfilling Virgin Orbit’s role as an affordable responsive space provider.“

“We’re proud that NorthStar is leveraging our Space Services model and established space, ground, and web infrastructure to rapidly deploy its constellation, which is critical to tackling the pressing issue of space debris and delivering fundamental information for satellite operators,” added Joel Spark, Co-Founder and General Manager, Space Services, Spire.

NorthStar seeks to empower humanity to preserve our planet through a unique Space and Earth information & intelligence platform using space-based satellite systems. NorthStar strives to help transform the way governments, industry, and institutions assess risk, enforce regulations and make decisions to foster the sustainable development of our Earth and Space environment. NorthStar’s transformational space-based commercial Space Situational Awareness services address many of the critical and immediate challenges facing all satellite operators. Striving to improve the prospect of space sustainability, NorthStar will deliver more frequent and precise observations of resident space objects than any current system. NorthStar generates its Space Information & Intelligence services through a suite of high-speed, decision-quality information services derived from its unparalleled coverage, object custody, and enhanced predictive analytics.

Advanced Space LLC. has completed its fourth trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) for CAPSTONE — TCM-4 was the fourth of six planned maneuvers en route to the Moon, targeting the precise orbit for the CAPSTONE demonstration. This follows the restoration of the spacecraft’s capabilities as it has recovered from the anomaly that occurred after TCM-3. CAPSTONE is just two weeks away as of this writing from arrival at the Moon.

The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, CAPSTONE, spacecraft mission will test the lunar Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) that is the intended orbit for Gateway, a lunar space station that will support NASA’s Artemis program, making CAPSTONE the first milestone launch of the Artemis program.

The primary mission is planned for at least six months of operations orbiting the Moon, with enhanced mission opportunities in the following 12 months. CAPSTONE has already contributed insights with shared navigation and operational data to the Artemis I rideshare payloads that will assist them in their mission operations.

Recently, the Deep Space Network (DSN) performed a test with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to confirm that LRO could receive and return the signal CAPSTONE will be using to interact with the spacecraft as part of the CAPS software demonstrations once it arrives at the Moon.

CAPSTONE launched on June 28th and is a 12U, 55-pound cubesat built by Terran Orbital. Using a fuel-efficient, Ballistic Lunar Transfer (BLT) method, CAPSTONE’s journey from launch to lunar orbit is a total of four months. A key feature of the BLT is that the mission operations and commissioning have the time during transit to evaluate performance and complete thorough check-out of systems before arriving at the Moon. As expected, the cruise thus far has focused on preparing the spacecraft for its mission at the Moon.

“The CAPSTONE team at Advanced Space, Terran Orbital, and their partners has shown great resilience over the past several weeks. Now, as CAPSTONE approaches lunar orbit, we are looking forward to getting into more of the technology demonstrations that are part of this mission and gathering operational data with the spacecraft in orbit at the Moon,” said Christopher Baker, program executive for the Small Spacecraft Technology program in NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “CAPSTONE is a great example of the work we can do with our commercial partners, small businesses, and small spacecraft.“

“This TCM confirms the preparation, extensive analysis, teams working together and continued hard work to allow this mission to remain successful, especially following the recent anomaly,” said Alec Forsman, Systems Engineering Lead and Mission Operations Manager for CAPSTONE at Advanced Space. “Every activity provides many lessons learned before our arrival at the Moon. These experiences better prepare the team for lunar operations.”

Some numbers from the TCM include:

• Maneuver telemetry shows that the spacecraft propulsion system fired for the nominal duration of approximately 220 seconds.

• At the time of maneuver execution, the spacecraft was approximately 308,076 miles or 495,800 km from the Earth (~14 times further than the GEO belt and ~69,200 miles or 111,400 km further than the Moon).

• CAPSTONE has been flying solo in space for more than 100 days (125 days since launch, 119 days since separation).

A primary mission objective is to demonstrate autonomous spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation services that will allow future spacecraft to determine their location in space without relying exclusively on tracking from Earth. This technology was developed by Advanced Space and is called CAPS, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System.

“What is amazing about this team at Advanced Space is how they execute. CAPSTONE is one of the many important projects that we have delivered successfully to our customers,” said Tom Gardner, Director of Engineering and Program Manager for CAPSTONE. “We have the great fortune of working with interplanetary projects to Mars and other planets, on AI in space, XGEO Awareness, and other novel space technologies. Each team member ensures success with them all and the interdependencies become a benefit to our customers and our industry as a whole.”

Reliable comms access for RV’ers on-the-road has been a constant hassle over the past several years… and also quite expensive. Now, however, a possible solution is presenting itself to those who travel to and fro in their mobile, home-like conveyances — Starlink service for RVs.

This product is now available for order and use — a coverage map of where Starlink may be accessed and the available capacity available at a selected location is viewable at this direct link…

According the company, access to high-speed, low-latency internet on an as-needed basis using the Starlink hardware and access plans is now shipping — through the in-motion, Flat High Performance Starlink product — or portable use with the Standard Starlink product.

The Standard Starlink product is not designed for in-motion use and is for portable hardware set-up and use at an RV’ers selected destination (again, where there is active coverage) and can be packed up quickly, within minutes, when the time has come to moving to a new destination, where the unit can, once again, be set-up for use.

Regarding the Flat High Performance Starlink, a company statement offers, “The new Flat High Performance Starlink allows users to enjoy high-speed, low-latency internet while in-motion. With a wide field of view and enhanced GPS capabilities, the Flat High Performance Starlink can connect to more satellites, allowing for consistent connectivity on the go.” Note — this Flat High Performance Product is only available in select markets — see the coverage map.

For RV’ers that move to locations that are remote and where connectivity is unavailable or unreliable, users will be able to access high-speed and low-latency internet access via the Flat High Performance Starlink at areas that are designated “High Capacity.” Notably lower speeds will be experienced during peak usage hours in areas that are marked “Low Capacity.”

The Flat High Performance Starlink hardware is designed for permanent installation on an RV unit and is able to withstand harsh environments, an especially appreciated feature when traveling across the highways and byways of a country where weather can change rather quickly.

Billing is of the ‘Pay as You Go‘ variety. RV’ers can pause and unpause their service at any time, with billing in increments of one month. If an RV’er is not traveling and not using the service, no billing will occur, a refreshing change from other online service charges from other firms.

For further Starlink RV use details, select this direct link…

SpaceX successfully lifted off from Vandenberg SFB with 53 Starlink satellites aboard a Falcon 9 launch vehicle en route to their orbital slots. This 49th launch of 2022 added these smallsats to the Starlink constellation and was initiated at approximately 6:14 p.m., PST.

The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, DART, and five Starlink missions, and the first stage successfully landed on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship that is stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

Original posting…

SpaceX is targeting Thursday, October 27, for a Falcon 9 launch of 53 Starlink satellites to LEO from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The instantaneous launch window is at 6:14 p.m. PT (01:14 UTC on Friday, October 28), and a backup opportunity is available on Friday, October 28 at 5:52 p.m. PT (00:52 UTC on Saturday, October 29).

Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship, which will be stationed in the Pacific Ocean.

Watch the live launch webcast starting about 5 minutes before liftoff at this direct link…