AAC Clyde Space has won a contract to continue to operate the Seahawk satellite for one more year, a contract that may be extended up to two years further provided that the spacecraft continues to deliver data. Launched in 2018 with an expected lifetime of four years, the Seahawk is exceeding life expectancy for cube satellites, continuing to deliver data.

The 3U cube satellite, launched in 2018, is part of a partnership between the University of North Carolina Wilmington and NASA funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. It features a compact, multispectral imager (HawkEye) that captures approximately 100 images weekly which are used to analyze the color of the ocean. The data enables a greater understanding of the marine food chain, oceanic climate, fisheries and pollution phenomena, factors used to support the health and sustainability of the oceans.

The satellite is operated from AAC Clyde Space’s Glasgow Operations Centre, with instrument data downloaded to the NASA’s Alaska station, through the satellite’s X-band downlink. The data is integrated into NASA’s SeaWiFS Data Analysis System (SeaDAS) and is distributed free of charge to scientists worldwide.

“AAC Clyde Space are delighted to continue to support the SeaHawk mission to improve environmental surveillance and generate reliable data to support the health and sustainability of our oceans. The SeaHawk is a cube satellite with a great mission for our planet,” said AAC Clyde Space CEO, Luis Gomes.

Don Richardson, Director at Cassiopeia Space Systems Inc. (CSS), has built a joint venture with Israel’s Over-SAT and developed the RIGEL Satcom Terminal (<= PDF brochure download).

This JV was funded with $1 million by the Israel US Bi-national R&D fund — BIRD Foundation

“A private Israeli space venture recently propelled our nation into the club of four countries that have landed on the moon,” said Uri Oran, Director General of the Israel Space Agency at an US Israel Space Tech event, which took place at the Virginia Tech Briefing Center in Arlington in October. A second $100-million privately funded and managed mission, called Beresheet 2 (Beresheet is the Hebrew name for the first book in the Bible, Genesis), is slated to launch in 2024.

“As we trend toward a $1-trillion space market,” added Oran, ”one of the Israel Space Agency’s priorities is to develop a national infrastructure to be a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs to build private space ventures.”

Attended by representatives of space related start-ups and established technology firms, as well as government and other stakeholders, the event followed by just three weeks the first meeting of the U.S.-Israel Strategic High-Level Dialogue on Technology held in the White House.

NASA’s Dr. Eliad Peretz, Lead Researcher for New Space Missions at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, noted NASA’s openness to private sector participation when he briefed the group on access points for companies to receive NASA funding to support its core research tasks, including Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants.

Starburst Aerospace, an innovation catalyst and the only aerospace accelerator in Israel, is exploring establishing a startup accelerator program in Virginia to facilitate co-development between industry leaders to solve the aerospace industry’s most pressing technological challenges, according to Noemie Alliel, Managing Director of Starburst Israel who presented at the event.

“The program will support pre-seed and seed-stage startups and focus on accelerating the product-market fit with key design partners from Starburst’s global ecosystem that will provide beta site and funding,” said Alliel.

The Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB), a state agency developing economic, cultural and educational connections between Israel and Virginia, hosted Space Tech along with the Arlington County Economic Development Agency and TYPE5, a space tech investment group. Virginia Israel Advisory Board’s Executive Director Dov Hoch said he is working with Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera to develop a STEM education program involving Virginia students with the Israel lunar lander Beresheet 2.

“We envision a learning program that will lead to launching a student digital payload to the moon, then a yearlong engagement with the lunar orbiter involving Virginia students communicating with and monitoring activities in space,” said Hoch.

“We were thrilled to partner with VIAB to host the US-Israel Space Tech Event in Arlington,” said Marian Marquez, Acting Deputy Director of Arlington Economic Development. “Earlier this year, I met with Israeli tech companies in Tel Aviv that are driving space innovation with important commercial and defense applications, and we have many great companies here in Northern Virginia doing the same. Space Tech brought them together.”

The Arlington gathering built on momentum in space tech collaboration between Virginia and Israeli companies that started in 2021 when Wakefield, Virginia, based Mil-SAT partnered with Israel’s Over-SAT in a joint venture to create Cassiopeia Space Systems Inc. (CSS). CSS presented their RIGEL Satcom Terminal at Space Tech. “I am very proud and excited to be working with Over-Sat on this game-changing technology for the new LEO networks,” said Don Richardson, CSS Director.

The venture’s initial $1-million funding came from the US-Israel Bi-National R&D fund (BIRD) whose Deputy Executive Director, Limor Nakar-Vincent, presented at Space Tech, encouraging attendees to explore R&D partnerships with Israeli companies who can receive up to $1.5-million in non-dilutive funding.

Other presenters included Israel Aerospace Industries, Israel’s largest defense company whose US headquarters is in Herndon, Virginia; Kevin Pomfret, partner at Williams Mullen Law Firm and member of the Space Law Committee of the International Bar Association; and Professor Vassilios Kovanis, Virginia Tech Innovation Campus Founding Faculty Member and Bradley Department ECE Director of the ECE Meng, who presented the relevance of Virginia Tech’s work in quantum computing as an enabling technology for space related concerns and provided a briefing on the Innovation Campus.

“To me, Space Tech was the ‘first step’ in space-related partnerships between Virginia and Israeli companies,” said VIAB’s Hoch. “It was a marvelous follow-up to an event in 2021 when then Governor Northam invited an Israeli Ministry of Defense unmanned systems delegation to Virginia. Earlier this month, UVision, an unmanned Israeli defense contractor, opened a facility in Stafford.”

For more information, contact: Dov Hoch, Virginia Israel Advisory Board

Article by Keith Cowing

Exotrail and Isar Aerospace have signed a multiple launch services agreement — Isar Aerospace’s launch vehicle Spectrum will launch Exotrail’s spacevan vehicle on several launches to LEO and geostationary transfer orbits (GTO) from Isar Aerospace’s launch sites in Andøya, Norway, and CSG, French Guiana, between 2024 and 2029. With this combo of launchpads, Isar Aerospace provides access to all orbits.

With the demand for flexible and cost-efficient access to space continuing to rise, Exotrail and Isar Aerospace have partnered to break new ground in the delivery of satellites. This combination of both service offers enables customers to launch single satellites and satellite constellations and place them in the orbit of their choice to drive forward telecommunication, EO, space logistics and exploration.

With this agreement, Exotrail extends its manifest to continue to provide competitive solutions and to meet the market’s growing demand for precise satellite delivery in LEO, with specific orbital planes, inclinations and altitudes, as well as further to the geostationary orbit (GEO). Doing so, the company pursues the increase in the firm’s spacedrop manifest, with a stable financial framework and without compromising service flexibility. The spacevan vehicles will embark on the Spectrum launcher, with the possibility of flying from Isar Aerospace’s two launch facilities.

Exotrail’s tailored spacedrop service allows satellite operators to launch their spacecrafts into their bespoke operational orbits. Exotrail offers an integrated service by procuring access to space, integrating customers satellites onto the spacevan platform and performing the required operations in orbit.

Contrary to other solutions on the market, Exotrail’s spacevan uses space-proven, electric propulsion to increase passenger capacity and range. The versatility of Isar Aerospace’s launch offering toward specific planes and low inclinations, along with the spacevan performances, will allow Exotrail to deliver passengers’ satellites in any plane and any inclination, making new business models available and sustainable. Exotrail’s spacedrop service also helps launch service providers to extend the range of their accessible missions and optimize the filling ratio of their rocket, to increase both revenues and profitability.

Isar Aerospace underlines yet another expansion of its launch manifest and is cementing its presence as the leading private European launch service provider. Together, the two companies will further deliver on their mission to shape the European NewSpace industry.

Jean-Luc Maria, CEO of Exotrail, said, “The contract with Isar Aerospace enables us to consolidate our spacedrop service by offering more launch opportunities to customers looking for bespoke and competitive access to LEO and GEO orbits. We are looking forward to these flights and to building a long term, mutually beneficial partnership with Isar Aerospace and our respective customers.”

“Exotrail is one of the leading European NewSpace companies – we are delighted to welcome them on-board Spectrum’s flights and thank Exotrail’s team for the trust and confidence it has placed in us. We are proud to further expand our launch manifest and can look on a strong customer record,” said Daniel Metzler, CEO and Co-Founder of Isar Aerospace.

About Exotrail
Exotrail is an end-to-end space mobility operator. The company offers customers the capability to define their space mobility need with the spacestudio mission analysis software, meet that need with spaceware onboard propulsion systems and spacedrop in-space mobility services, and operate the solution with the spacetower software. This complete mobility offering called mobilityhub allows satellites to optimize their deployment, increase their service performance, and reduce space pollution. Exotrail has been incorporated in 2017 and has secured over 20M€ of funding. The company has more than 20 customers in North America, Europe and Asia. Exotrail’s team is expanding quickly and consists, as of today, of +75 passionate people operating out of two locations: Toulouse and Massy (suburb of Paris) in France.

About Isar Aerospace
Isar Aerospace, based in Ottobrunn/Munich, develops and builds launch vehicles for transporting small and medium-sized satellites as well as satellite constellations into Earth’s orbit. The company was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from Technical University Munich. Since then, it has grown to more than 300 employees from more than 40 nations with many years of hands-on rocket know-how as well as experience within other high-tech industries. The company is privately financed by former SpaceX VP Bulent Altan as well as world-leading investors including Airbus Ventures, Apeiron, Earlybird, HV Capital, Lakestar, Lombard Odier, Porsche SE, UVC Partners, and Vsquared Ventures.

Fleet Space Technologies is delighted to announce a major new contract with Core Lithium.

The contract, which comes into effect in May of 2023, will see Fleet’s pioneering, satellite-based, mineral exploration system, ExoSphere, deployed across Core’s tenements in the Northern Territory of Australia. Core was also successful in applying for the co-funding of a tenement-wide deployment of Exosphere at its Shoobridge Project in 2022, under round 15 of the Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations program. .

This follows successful results of a collaborative trial between Core Lithium and Fleet Space Technologies at the BP33 prospect. In August of 2022 the company jointly announced the successful conclusion of survey trials. In a statement, Core Lithium described the results of the trial as ‘an outstanding success,’ noting an ‘excellent correlation with the pegmatite body interpreted from drilling to depths in excess of 500m’ and stating that ‘a number of previously unknown targets have emerged – a major boost for exploration.’

Core is using ExoSphere to accelerate its lithium exploration activities, in line with its vision to provide high-grade lithium for electric vehicle (EV) and renewable energy storage applications worldwide. 

The successful discovery of lithium, cobalt, copper and nickel is essential to the global transition to clean-air mobility. Global EV demand cannot be met unless the pace of discoveries dramatically increases. The World Economic Forum states that the world’s battery capacity must grow 40 times larger than what is available today to meet capacity demands. 

Developed by Fleet Space at the firm’s headquarters in Adelaide, Australia, ExoSphere is a pioneering exploration system that delivers detailed, 3D subsurface images in days, rather than months required using conventional techniques. An array of satellite-enabled geophones, called Geodes, use edge computing to analyze ambient seismic noise collected by Ambient Noise Tomography (ANT). Geodes are up to 10 times more sensitive than existing nodal geophones, increasing accuracy and depth of results. This data is then rapidly processed and transmitted through Fleet’s low power satellite network.

What ExoSphere can do for Core is enable direct detection of pegmatites to increase the probability of success in drilling. This results in less drilling, less cost, less time to discovery and less environmental disturbance. 

The contract includes the Geodes, planning and deployment support, and real-time processing and delivery of 3D shear velocity models for one year. 

About Fleet Space Technologies
Fleet Space Technologies is Australia’s leading space company. Fleet operates from a state-of-the-art HQ in Adelaide, South Australia, and has recently expanded internationally to the US, which are global centers of excellence in space and advanced aerospace technologies. At Fleet, we are Explorers with a mission to connect the Earth, Moon and Mars and our team has rapidly grown to over 80 employees in the last 6 months. Fleet designs, builds and operates a constellation of micro satellites which delivers universal connectivity across the globe. Following an oversubscribed Series B funding round, Fleet will continue to build a constellation of 288 satellites. 

Rivada Space Networks GmbH has issued a request for proposals for 600 LEO satellites, having released the RFP for the associated, heavy-lift launch services two weeks ago.

The company anticipates selecting a prime contractor for the space segment, parts of the ground segment and system integration for the LEO constellation by the end of 2022 in parallel to the selection of the launch service provider.

For the first time, Rivada Space Networks will offer access to a secure satellite network with pole-to-pole reach, offering end-to-end latencies similar or better than terrestrial fiber. The Rivada network will operate like an optical backbone in space, using lasers to interconnect satellites and deliver an ultra-secure and highly reliable global data network for business operations in the telecom, enterprise, maritime, energy and government services markets.

Since formally launching in March 2022, Rivada Space Networks has been on a fast-track mission to complete the detailed definition of the overall system architecture and provide the production and deployment framework needed to place a firm contract for the constellation and associated launch services.

The preceding phase B study concluded that the procurement plan will successfully fulfill the requirements associated with the company’s high priority ITU Ka-band filings. With a contract for manufacturing and launch in place by the end of 2022, deployment will start in 2024, with 300 satellites in orbit by mid-2026 and full constellation deployment expected by mid-2028.

Clemens Kaiser, Rivada Space Networks Chief Program Officer, said, “Following a rigorous process with a number of leading satellite manufacturers, we are delighted that today we have completed another major milestone in the specification and development of our unique constellation to enable secure, global connectivity for governments and enterprises. The key attributes of RSN’s laser-linked LEO constellation architecture include global reach, low latency, ultra-security, resilience and optional quantum key encryption. We have worked tirelessly to ensure that our system comprises the best the satellite industry has to offer. We are really looking forward to moving to the next phase of our program to manufacture and deploy our LEO constellation.”

Severin Meister, Rivada Space Networks CEO, said, “RSN is a German ‘NewSpace’ innovator and disruptor. I am incredibly proud of what our team has achieved in such a short time frame. Over the course of the past eight months we have completed the design of our satellite system and grown our teams in Munich and Berlin to further develop the technical, commercial and regulatory competencies of the company. With over 60 people today, we anticipate expanding further to over 100 people by the end of Q1 2023 and are on track to execute our vision of providing the first truly global point-to-point low latency connectivity network.” Meister added: “Initial customers are showing great interest, which confirms that we will occupy a much-needed niche. This is the German NewSpace company to watch!“

Rivada Space Networks Founder, Declan Ganley, said, “I am thrilled that we have completed this important milestone. This is a unique satellite network in terms of security, speed and global reach.. Our constellation in combination with our patented Open Access Wireless Market Platform allows us to offer a network with unprecedented flexibility. It will be instrumental in driving the next leg of the ongoing communications revolution. Having recently joined the ITU Partner2Connect digital inclusion initiative and the EU’s multi-stakeholder Secure Connectivity Program, we are committed to providing a secure communications infrastructure like no other for Government and Enterprise.“

Rivada Space Networks GmbH is a disruptive new company set to establish and operate the first, truly global, low latency, point-to-point connectivity network of LEO satellites. By connecting its satellites with lasers, Rivada Space Networks will provide resellers and B2B customers with the ability to securely connect any two points on the globe with low latency and high bandwidth. The constellation of 600 low-earth-orbit communications satellites will represent a fundamental change in the availability of secure, global, end-to-end enterprise-grade connectivity for Telecom, Enterprise, Maritime, Energy and Government Services markets. Rivada Space Networks is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rivada Networks, Inc.

Rocket Lab USA Inc. has successfully launched its 32^nd Electron mission to deploy the firm’s 152^nd satellite to orbit, a science payload for the Swedish National Space Agency. The MATS satellite was deployed to its 585 km. circular orbit by Electron following lift-off at 17:27 UTC.

The company’s attempt to capture the Electron rocket with a helicopter as it descended to Earth from space was not successful; however, the ocean recovery of the rocket was successful and will be returned to the Rocket Lab’s Auckland Production Complex to be processed and assessed by engineers and technicians for possible re-use.

This science research satellite was built by space systems provider OHB Sweden. The Mesospheric Airglow/Aerosol Tomography and Spectroscopy (MATS) satellite is the basis for the SNSA’s science mission to investigate atmospheric waves and better understand how the upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere interacts with wind and weather patterns closer to the ground.

MATS was originally due to fly on a Russian launch service before the mission was manifested on Rocket Lab’s Electron. The MATS payload continued to its orbit onboard the rocket’s second stage while Electron’s first stage descended back to Earth.

The “Catch Me If You Can” mission also resulted in a successful ocean splashdown of the Electron rocket’s first stage. Rocket Lab had planned to attempt amid-air capture of Electron’s first stage with a helicopter if conditions allowed, however not all requirements were met to ensure a successful capture. Due to a brief telemetry loss with Electron’s first stage during its atmospheric re-entry, the helicopter was moved out of the capture zone per standard safety procedure. The Electron first stage completed a safe splashdown and Rocket Lab’s recovery vessel is now alongside the stage to bring it onboard and back to Rocket Lab’s production facility for inspection and analysis.

“Congratulations to the teams at OHB Sweden and the Swedish National Space Agency on their mission,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “It’s been a long journey for MATS, so I’m proud of the Rocket Lab team for doing their part to support this mission with a fast contract-to-orbit turnaround of just four months.”

Catch Me If You Can was Rocket Lab’s ninth mission of the year, adding to an already-record year of successful orbital launches for the Company. Rocket Lab remains on track to launch its first Electron mission from Virginia before the end of the year, on a mission for HawkEye360 that is scheduled to launch in December.

“Bringing a rocket back from space is a challenging task and capturing it mid-air with a helicopter is as complex as it sounds,” said Peter Beck. “The chances for success are much smaller than that of failure because many complex factors must perfectly align. We are proud to have successfully recovered our fifth rocket from the ocean now and we look forward to another mid-air capture attempt in future as we work toward making Electron a reusable rocket.”