Archives for August 2023

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) has signed a double-launch deal with NASA to deliver the Agency’s climate change, research-focused mission, PREFIRE, to LEO in 2024.

The two dedicated missions on Electron will deploy one smallsat each to a 525 km. circular orbit from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand from May of 2024. The PREFIRE mission has specific LTAN (Local Time of the Ascending Node) requirements and a need for the second satellite to be deployed to space shortly after the first, which is made possible by Electron’s ability to deploy dedicated small satellite missions on highly responsive timelines. The launches will be the 7th and 8th missions Rocket Lab has launched for NASA since 2018.

NASA’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission will help close a gap in understanding of how much of Earth’s heat is lost to space, especially from the Arctic and Antarctica. Analysis of PREFIRE’s measurements will inform climate and ice models, providing better projections of how a warming world will affect sea ice loss, ice sheet melt, and sea level rise. Improving climate models can ultimately help to provide more accurate projections on the impacts of storm severity and frequency, as well as coastal erosion and flooding. PREFIRE consists of two, 6U CubeSats with a baseline mission length of 10 months.

The PREFIRE mission was awarded to Rocket Lab through NASA’s Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) program, a $300 million dollar five-year contracting vehicle for placing NASA’s science and technology payloads on U.S. commercial launchers.

PREFIRE joins a long list of NASA missions awarded to Rocket Lab, including the CAPSTONE mission to the Moon on Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle and Lunar Photon satellite bus, the back-to-back launches in May 2023 of the TROPICS satellites for NASA’s hurricane monitoring mission, and the NASA Starling mission launched last month on Rocket Lab’s most recent Electron recovery launch.

“Missions like these are core to the whole reason why Rocket Lab was founded in the first place – to open up access to space to improve life on Earth – and climate change is a hugely urgent cause for us all. It’s a privilege to be able to support this important mission and an honor to be a continued trusted launch provider for small satellite missions with big impact.” — Peter Beck, Founder and CEO, Rocket Lab

Warpspace has reported that the company’s proposal, “Development of a modem and router to realize a multi-protocol platform for optical communications in space,” has been selected by the National Research and Development Agency New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) for the Japanese “SBIR Program” (one-stop-shop type) for fiscal year 2023.

Conventional communication methods, mainly radio frequencies, have a problem because data in space cannot be transmitted smoothly to the Earth. The company aims to solve this problem by realizing a near-real-time optical communication service in space using smallsats and contributing to disaster prevention and primary industry by increasing the number and speed of satellite data that can be provided on the ground to meet their data needs.

Through this project, Warpspace will develop optical communication modems and routers that are compatible and interoperable in satellite optical communication networks.

Following the Basic Plan for Space Policy approved by the Cabinet in 2020, Japan’s policy is strengthening the comprehensive infrastructure that supports space activities using optical communications. In this context, competition for satellite optical communication networks has begun with a large amount of public and private capital being invested worldwide, with the U.S. leading the way.

The market is demanding the expansion of nexgen space networks such as Beyond 5G or the internet in space, and compatibility and interoperability are required to connect all of these networks across the board.

In this context, Warpspace recognizes the need for spacecraft, such as satellites, to translate and relay each communication network protocol to link independently developed communication networks into a single network. The development of equipment with this function is the initiative adopted this time.

Based on the technology developed through this project, our company aims to become the hub of the entire satellite optical communication network and realize a grand space internet.

The “SBIR Program” in Japan supports the R&D and commercialization of small and medium-sized enterprises and start-up companies working on R&D themes presented by the relevant government agencies, aiming to solve social issues and accelerate Japan’s innovation. With the adoption of this project, the company aims to become a firm that further contributes to society by developing new technologies.

“We are heartened that our proposed optical router/modem project has been selected for the SBIR Program for FY2023. Japan is one of the few countries researching and developing inter-satellite optical communication technology. Industry, government, and academia in Europe and the United States are devoting significant resources to applying this technology to revolutionize data communications worldwide. We believe that our selection for the “SBIR Program” will give us the confidence and strong support to face the global market with technology from Japan. We will do our utmost to develop this technology to realize our vision of the future with optical communications.” — Hiromitsu Azuma, CEO, Warpspace

DCUBED, the German NewSpace hardware manufacturer, announced it will demonstrate in-space manufacturing as part of a demonstration mission expected in Q1 2024. This will be the first time ever that a product has been manufactured in free space.

The demonstration will see the production of a roughly 30 centimeter high, 3D printed truss structure, and is designed to prove the efficacy of in-space manufacturing and highlight the game-changing potential that such capabilities promise to deliver for production in-orbit.

“Payload limitations and costs are real barriers hindering the use of space for the benefit of mankind. There is an urgent need for large structures in orbit to support an ecosystem providing services as diverse as internet from space, IoT, and Earth observation. The establishment of our new key business division shows that we at DCUBED always want to push the boundaries of what is possible, enabling our partners and customers to think big in space. Our demonstration of manufacturing in free space promises to revolutionize in-space fabrication and repair of space structures and trigger a paradigm shift in how we approach the production of space hardware, opening many doors which we can’t even imagine right now. This is a truly disruptive enabling technology.” Dr. Thomas Sinn, CEO & Founder, DCUBED.

The upcoming demonstration is a major milestone in DCUBED’s efforts towards establishing in-space manufacturing capabilities for larger space structures, especially for SmallSat applications, due to be demonstrated by the company in the next couple of years. This program includes an in-orbit experiment of truss-structure manufacturing in 2025 and an in-orbit mission demonstration, in 2026, for a multiple kilowatt (KW) SmallSat solar arrays.

A space mechanism builder with 15 products already in orbit, DCUBED, which is headquartered outside Munich, Germany, is establishing an office in Broomfield, Colorado, an ideal location within the key United States space market.

SCOUT Space Inc. has been selected by SpaceWERX for a Phase II STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) in the amount of $1.5 million, focused on “Robust Cross-Domain Optical Navigation with Space-Based Sensors” to address the most pressing challenges in the Department of the Air Force (DAF).

SCOUT was awarded the Phase II Orbital Prime STTR in collaboration with Stanford University’s Space Rendezvous Laboratory (SLAB), founded and led by Professor Simone D’Amico.

SCOUT will collaborate with SLAB to enhance Space Mobility and Logistics capabilities by exploring the boundary between characterization of resolved and non-resolved imagery, and working to bridge it for space-based sensing.

The Air Force Research Laboratory and AFWERX have partnered to streamline the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and STTR process by accelerating the small business experience through faster proposal to award timelines, changing the pool of potential applicants by expanding opportunities to small business and eliminating bureaucratic overhead by continually implementing process improvement changes in contract execution.

The DAF began offering the Open Topic SBIR/STTR program in 2018 which expanded the range of innovations the DAF funded and now, SCOUT Space will start its journey to create and provide innovative capabilities that will strengthen the national defense of the United States of America.

“The characterization of location, motion, and other data of objects in space for space domain awareness requires well-defined processes for processing sensor data. Our work with Prof. D’Amico’s lab is exciting because it lets us tackle an environment – the semi-resolved domain – which is very indeterminate today, and in which few algorithms are proven. We hope to facilitate decision-making across the entire range of rendezvous and proximity operations by achieving continuity and convergence in state estimation from these different phenomenologies.” — Sergio Gallucci, Co-Founder and CTO, SCOUT

“We are poised to increase the technology readiness level of new algorithms at the intersection of astrodynamics, nonlinear estimation, and machine learning to enable new mission concepts in the area of In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM). The US Space Force and SCOUT are giving us a unique opportunity to reach flight readiness with spacecraft navigation technologies that would have normally taken several years to accomplish.” — Professor Simone D’Amico, Founder and Director, SLAB

SpaceX‘s Falcon 9 rocket originally scheduled to launch 22 of the second-generation “V2” mini satellites, that are larger and have four times the bandwidth of the previous models, is now rescheduled to 12:27 a.m. EDT (0427 UTC) early Friday morning. The 22 Starlink satellites will head into low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

If needed, an additional launch opportunity is available at 1:17 a.m. ET (5:17 UTC). Five backup opportunities are also currently available on Friday, August 11 starting at 9:30 p.m. ET (1:30 UTC on August 12) until 12:52 a.m. ET on August 12 (4:52 UTC). This will be the 11th launch of the V2 minis.

The company’s internet service is available in more than 60 countries and has more than 1.5 million subscribers according to reports in May of this year.

The first stage booster previously launched the Cargo Dragon CRS-24, Eutelsat Hotbird 13F, OneWeb 1, and SES-18/SES-19 missions, plus four Starlink deployment flights. Its last flight was the Starlink 5-12 mission on June 23, 2023.

After separating from the second stage about two and a half minutes into flight, the first stage booster, that had previously flown the Crew-6, SES O3b mPOWER and the Starlink 4-4 mission, will target landing on the drone ship, Just Read the Instructions stationed east of the Bahamas in the Atlantic. The booster’s last launch was 37 days ago.

The booster had previously flown the Crew-6, SES O3b mPOWER and the Starlink 4-4 missions. Its last launch was 37 days ago.

Collins Aerospace, an RTX (NYSE: RTX) business, has been awarded a $36 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop and demonstrate a platform-agnostic, Beyond-Line-Of-Sight (BLOS), SATCOM pod.

The communications pod will provide warfighters resilient, high bandwidth, low latency communications and data directly to the cockpit. The pod brings together military and commercial satellites to add resiliency to the host platforms; and will switch between services from different vendors with little or no hardware modification, while providing the ability to utilize future constellations as they come online.

“It is critical in a contested environment that the warfighter can communicate with operators regardless of communication path. This resilient communications terminal is designed for survivability in degraded environments to offer military leaders enhanced situational awareness to make better decisions, faster across the battlespace.” — Ryan Bunge, Vice President, Communication & Networking Solutions, Collins Aerospace

RTX debuts largest CubeSat form factor

RTX‘s (NYSE: RTX) smallsat manufacturer and mission services provider, Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), has introduced the XB16 CubeSat, now the largest form factor in the company’s CubeSat product line.

The XB16 CubeSat offers 14U of payload volume with a cannister-dependent option for an additional 12,000 cubic centimeters of volume, all while maintaining BCT’s robust power systems, secure data handling, resilient performance, and ultra-precise attitude control systems. The larger payload volume capacity of the XB16 provides an ideal solution for remote sensing, earth observation, and in-space communications.

This addition to the BCT array of peak-performance and cost-effective spacecraft solutions continues the company’s ability to support all types of academic, commercial and government space missions.

The new XB16 will be developed at BCT’s Spacecraft Manufacturing Center located in Boulder, Colorado. The office and laboratories are designed specifically for high-volume production of spacecraft systems and components, with the manufacturing capability to handle large constellations of small spacecraft.

“Our flight-proven products are known for their fine-pointing and agility on orbit. Now we are able to offer a larger payload volume with the same high level of accuracy and orbit lifetime.” — John Carvo, Executive Director of CubeSats, Blue Canyon

Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), RTX’s smallsat manufacturer and mission services provider, offers a diverse portfolio of innovative, reliable, and affordable spacecraft and components that enable a broad range of missions and technological advancements for the new space economy. The company currently supports numerous unique missions with over 100 cumulative spacecraft orders.

RTX to attune AI decisions to human values for DARPA

RTX’s (NYSE: RTX) Raytheon BBN division received a contract award to support DARPA’s “In The Moment” program — ITM aims to develop the foundations needed for algorithms that are trusted to independently make decisions in scenarios like mass casualty triage and disaster relief, where complex and rapid decisions are needed in dynamic situations where there is often no human consensus and no clear right answer.

The Raytheon BBN-led team, which includes Kairos Research, MacroCognition, and Valkyries Austere Medical Solutions, will use a cognitive interviewing technique to understand how experts—in this case, medical professionals and first responders—evaluate information and make tough trade-offs to act decisively at critical decision points.

This qualitative information will be used to design scenario-based experiments to study how differences in an individual’s decision-making attributes can explain their choices, and how the alignment of attributes between two different people impacts the willingness to delegate decisions to another. This will enable AI to be tuned to match an expert population, or even to be tuned to match an individual expert.

DARPA is bringing together multiple teams to collaborate on this program. Other teams will focus on the development of prototype AI decision-makers that start with baseline knowledge and can then be tuned to match a set of target attributes.

The research products from this program will be integrated and evaluated to determine how well the algorithmic agents were able to make decisions consistent with the target human attributes when faced with difficult scenarios. The program will also test whether human experts trust these aligned agents over the baseline agents or other actual humans. In these program evaluations of trust, the human experts will be shown a record of decisions in difficult scenarios without knowing whether the decision-maker was an AI or a human.

Work on this contract, which is sponsored by DARPA and the Air Force Research Lab, is being performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Dayton, Ohio; and Anniston, Alabama.

“ITM is about more than getting AI to provide the correct answer in very controlled scenarios. We’re not talking about training AI on labelled data to help identify a cancerous tumor on an X-Ray,” said . “What we’re trying to accomplish instead is the ability to create AI systems that humans would allow to make decisions independently in uncontrolled environments. To accomplish this, we need to determine how human experts make really difficult decisions and assess whether to trust the decisions of others. We’ll be conducting both decision-making research and trust research.

“Because the way we make decisions varies from person to person, it’s unlikely that a one-size fits all trusted AI model exists. Instead, in theory, we should be able to create AI systems that adapt to the user and domain. Decisions are difficult because of uncertainty and trade-offs between competing goals. We want to be able to tune an AI’s attributes such as risk tolerance, process focus, or willingness to change plans to better match a user or a group of users.” — Alice Leung, Principal Investigator, Raytheon BBN

French rocket startup, HyPrSpace, and Precious Payload, a satellite launch provider, have teamed up to simplify the process for payload developers to reserve launches using HyPrSpace’s Orbital Baguette-1 (OB-1) rockets. These rockets can deliver 250 kg to LEO, with the maiden launch set for 2026. HyPrSpace caters to the needs of smallsats and satellite constellations with dedicated launches and rideshare opportunities.

The OB-1, (pronounced like the Star Wars character Obiwan), promises launches at half the cost of traditional micro-launchers. Its hybrid propulsion system employs a patented innovation, significantly reducing R&D and industrialization costs. Its architecture requires fewer components and has simpler geometry than traditional systems, eliminating the need for turbopumps. HyPrSpace was founded in 2019 by a team of space engineers who created its Orbital Baguette-1 (OB-1) micro-launcher and innovative hybrid propulsion technology, to provide cheaper, safer, and greener space access.

“HyPrSpace’s hybrid engines represent the next generation in space propulsion technology. We believe their approach, which can be scaled to serve a family of launch vehicles and space tugs, and have a potential to lower barriers to space access and enhance in-space mobility,” said Andrew Maximov, CEO and founder of Precious Payload.

Precious Payload is a space tech company that developed Launch.ctrl, a marketplace for satellite operators to book a launch and the necessary services to take their payloads from the ground to space. This process revolutionizes the way space access is bought and sold, with a wide range of launch providers listed on their platform.

HyPrSpace’s hybrid engines are non-explosive, posing less of a fire hazard compared to liquid propulsion. Embracing a greener approach, HyPrSpace’s technology can use various types of solid fuels, including recycled and plant-based HDPE, a type of plastic, commonly found in items like soap bottles, milk containers, and plastic bags.

Sylvain Bataillard, Co-Founder & COO of HyPrSpace, said, “The OB-1 is our leap towards a future of cheaper, safer, and more efficient space access. After two successful engine tests in 2022, we’ve scheduled full-stage configuration ground testing this year, supported by the General Directorate of Armament (DGA), which brings us a step closer to achieving our goal.”

HyPrSpace’s recent collaboration with the French Ministry of Armed Forces’ DGA, which grants access to the DGA Missile Testing site in Gironde, validates the way for further innovation and testing. This strategic alliance strengthens HyPrSpace’s potential to ‘disrupt the launch market’. This unique opportunity enables the company to plan its debut suborbital test launch in 2025.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) has signed another block buy deal for five Electron launches with BlackSky (NYSE: BSKY), a leading provider of real-time, geospatial intelligence and global monitoring services.

Rocket Lab has launched six Electron missions for BlackSky since 2019, becoming the primary launch provider for BlackSky’s constellation. With these five new launches added to the manifest, BlackSky has contracted more Electron launches than any other single, commercial customer. The launches are expected to begin in 2024 from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand.

BlackSky’s nexgen Gen-3 satellites are designed to produce images with up to 35 centimeter resolution. Increased resolution and enhanced spectral diversity extend BlackSky’s ability to provide real-time insights to its customers in a broad set of conditions, including nighttime, low light and challenging weather.

The new BlackSky launches join a busy Electron manifest in 2024 that featured missions for commercial constellation operators Capella Space, Kinéis, Hawkeye 360, and Synspective, as well as a variety of government missions.

“After four years of launching for BlackSky, we’re delighted to continue our partnership with more dedicated launches on Electron,. Building and maintaining a constellation requires precision deployment to unique orbits and a dependable launch schedule. We’re proud to deliver this dependable and tailored capability launch after launch, year after year.” — Peter Beck, Founder and CEO, Rocket Lab

ICEYE US Inc. has received the firm’s first Task Order under a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with NASA, announced earlier this year.

The Task Order enables NASA to acquire ICEYE’s synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) data for evaluation by scientific and academic communities to determine suitability for advancing NASA’s Earth Science research objectives. The BPA is funded by the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate.

Since 2020, NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) program has been identifying, evaluating, and acquiring data from commercial sources aligned to NASA’s Earth Science Division objectives.

The agreement between ICEYE US and NASA represents a significant milestone for commercial SAR in the United States. This is the first example of NASA gaining access to data from a radar imaging constellation, including an archive of tens of thousands of ICEYE images. Such access offers the distinct benefit of supporting advanced time series analysis of Earth’s surface – measurements that have not been previously available to the NASA community.

ICEYE SAR data is being provided with broad licensing authority to maximize the collaborative utility for research. ICEYE SAR data joins other types of satellite data from commercial remote sensing systems that have proven critical and complementary to NASA’s capabilities.

SAR offers a distinct advantage over traditional electro-optical (EO) imagery. While EO imaging requires a light source to illuminate locations – much like a camera does – SAR uses electromagnetic waves to construct images. This means SAR satellites can detect what is happening on land or sea, day or night, in any weather, without being obscured by cloud cover, dust or smoke.

“NASA is excited to evaluate ICEYE data in the context of our Earth Science Research, Analysis, and Applications portfolios. With the advent of SAR from commercial sources like ICEYE, we are interested in how these small satellite constellations can complement existing NASA datasets and capabilities. Ultimately, we aim to utilize these data to provide new perspectives to the science priorities of the Earth Science Division.” — Will McCarty, NASA CSDA Program Scientist

“We are privileged to support NASA’s Earth Science goals with our radar satellite imagery through this first Task Order. ICEYE sensors provide a persistent source of information for important research concerning geology, topography, and climate change among other fields. The CSDA program is an excellent example of NASA leveraging private sector investments for public benefit, in this case increasing the resilience of society by deepening our understanding of Earth’s evolution.” — Eric Jensen, CEO, ICEYE US

ICEYE US operates satellites from a Missions Operations Center in Irvine, California. The company owns and operates a constellation of SAR satellites, each weighing about 220 pounds, which provide persistent monitoring of locations anywhere on Earth in near-real time.