editorial

Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) has signed a contract with Lunasonde to deliver their Picacho CubeSat to orbit.

Lunasonde is a sub-surface imaging company with the goal of making underground resources – such as water and minerals – easier to locate. The Picacho CubeSat is a tech demo of Lunasonde’s sensors and will measure the power spectral density of low-frequency radio signals in the ionosphere that will help inform designs for the company’s future satellites. Picacho will fly on the Vigoride-7 spacecraft targeted to launch on the SpaceX Transporter-9 mission in October 2023.

Momentus currently has three Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicles in orbit. The Company has flights scheduled through the end of 2024.

“With more affordable and reliable access to space comes more impactful and dynamic uses of the space environment. We thank Lunasonde for their trust and the Momentus team is dedicated to making the orbital delivery of their payload a seamless part of their mission.”
— Chris Kinman, Chief Commercial Officer, Momentus

“We are excited to partner with Momentus on this mission. The responsive and versatile nature of the Vigoride platform has been a fantastic opportunity for our Picacho technology demonstrator, which will pave the way for Lunasonde’s groundbreaking insights into the Earth’s subsurface environment.”
— Jeremiah Pate, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Lunasonde

The U.S. Space Force’s (USSF) Small Launch and Targets Division’s Office at Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico, part of the Space Systems Command (SSC) Assured Access to Space organization, awarded a $45.5 million task order to Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation on May 24 via an Orbital Services Program (OSP)-4 Indefinite Delivery / Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract.

The contract will provide orbital launch services for the SSC Space Sensing Directorate’s latest spacecraft innovation, the Electro-Optical Infrared (EO/IR) Weather System (EWS) prototype, known as EWS Operational Demonstration-1, for a U.S. Space Force mission designated as USSF-261S-A.

The EWS prototype will prove out new EO/IR sensor technology to provide operational quality data to the DoD weather community and inform development of a more cost-effective and proliferated operational architecture. Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation will accomplish one launch of its Minotaur IV rocket to deliver the prototype satellite to LEO. The launch of EWS Operational Demonstration-1 on USSF-261S-A is planned for May of 2025.

The OSP-4 contract allows for the rapid, competitive acquisition of launch services to meet mission requirements enabling launch within 12-24 months from task order award. OSP-4 also allows for periodic on-ramps to ensure emerging, innovative launch providers can compete for future missions.

“The Space Force is committed to increasing speed in space acquisitions, and launch is an important part of the solution. We are excited to support future weather capabilities with this launch, using our flexible contracting approach to acquire the launch service in just five months. We are relentless about improving and streamlining the way we do business to use the best industry has to offer.”
— Lt. Col. Justin Beltz, SSC’s chief of the Small Launch and Targets Division

Space Systems Command is the U.S. Space Force’s field command responsible for acquiring and delivering resilient war fighting capabilities to protect our nation’s strategic advantage in and from space. SSC manages an $11 billion space acquisition budget for the DoD and works in partnership with joint forces, industry, government agencies, and academic and allied organizations to accelerate innovation and outpace emerging threats. Our actions today are making the world a better space for tomorrow.

UPDATE: Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB), a launch and space systems company, is preparing for the second of two dedicated Electron launches to deploy a constellation of storm monitoring satellites for NASA. This mission, named Coming To A Storm Near You, is now rescheduled for lift-off no earlier than Thursday, 8:10 PST on May 25, and Friday, May 26, 2023 NZST from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula.

Launch Window Opens:
NZST | 16:00, May 25
UTC | 04:00, May 25
EDT | 00:00, May 25
PDT| 21:00, May 24

Coming To A Storm Near You marks Rocket Lab’s second of two TROPICS launches for NASA, following the first launch on May 8^th NZST. Like the previous launch, Coming To A Storm Near You will send a pair of shoebox-sized satellites to low Earth orbit to collect tropical storm data more frequently than other weather satellites. The TROPICS constellation (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats) will help increase understanding of deadly storms and improve tropical cyclone forecasts, complementing other NASA and partner satellites. The TROPICS CubeSats require launch to a specific orbit at an altitude of 550 kilometers and inclination of about 30 degrees and all four satellites need to be deployed into their operational orbit within a 60-day period ahead of the 2023 North American storm season which begins in June.

“The TROPICS constellation has the potential to save lives and improve our knowledge of deadly storms, so we’re immensely proud to be part of making it possible,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “With one pair of TROPICS satellites now safely in orbit, we’re pleased to be back on the pad just two weeks later ready for the next launch. Regular and reliable dedicated small sat launch is what we developed Electron and our launch sites for, so it’s a great feeling to be delivering on that for NASA.”

Coming To A Storm Near You will be Rocket Lab’s fifth Electron mission for 2023 and the Company’s 37^th launch overall since Rocket Lab’s first Electron launch in 2017. The TROPICS launches follow on from previous successful Electron missions for NASA, including the ELaNa-19 mission and CAPSTONE mission to the Moon.

The live launch webcast will be available at www.rocketlabusa.com/live-stream from around T-20 minutes on launch day.

ICEYE has introduced a new imaging mode known as Dwell — with Dwell, ICEYE synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites remain focused on a specific point on the ground for an extended collection time.

This unique, long-duration, imaging mode allows ICEYE satellites to capture significantly more information about the imaging target, creating a powerful new capability for imagery users. For example, Dwell can be used to determine the heading and speed of moving vehicles, and under some circumstances, Dwell can even enable the discovery of human-made objects that would otherwise remain hidden under tree canopy. The Dwell product is unique in commercial remote sensing and will transform how customers with demanding mission requirements exploit SAR imagery.

The Dwell image product is created from a 25 second collection of the imaging target, in contrast to the 10 second duration of a traditional, high-resolution, ICEYE Spot image. This longer-duration collection provides new information about activity on the ground while also improving the image fidelity over a traditional SAR image. The result is a powerful, new, imaging capability that will expand the use of SAR for critical applications. Importantly, when combined with ICEYE’s day/night all-weather imaging capability and tactical responsiveness, Dwell provides an imagery capability that is superior to electro-optical collections.

The Dwell product is a bundle with three components:

• High-fidelity SAR image. A common feature in high-resolution SAR images is speckle, which is the result of the specific SAR collection geometry and gives SAR imagery a noise-like appearance. The extended collection time for a Dwell image enables a significantly larger synthetic aperture angle and produces pixels with an along-track resolution of 5 cm. Standard processing combines pixels together, a process called ‘multi-looking’, which significantly reduces the speckle artifacts. The result is a high-fidelity image with superior interpretability.

• Color subaperture image. A Dwell collection is particularly efficient at distinguishing human-made features, such as vehicles and buildings, from natural backgrounds such as tree canopy and vegetation. The color subaperture image preferentially distinguishes human-made features, allowing analysts to quickly find objects and features of interest among natural backgrounds.

• Video. The video is built from the multiple sub-images that comprise a Dwell collection. The video product enables determination of vehicle heading and speed during the 25-second collection, and provides additional context about activities and patterns of behavior.

Dwell expands the powerful portfolio of high-tempo, day/night, all-weather imaging capabilities enabled by the ICEYE constellation. Today ICEYE offers a wide-area collection mode called Scan for large area search; an intermediate, higher-resolution mode called Strip for higher-resolution mapping and search, and highest-resolution Spot and Spot Extended Area for high-confidence monitoring and mapping applications. With the introduction of Dwell, users can now unlock new insights about their areas of interest, doing so with capabilities unique to the commercial SAR market.

“Dwell mode is ideal for customers who need to extract more information from our radar imagery, including movement and direction. In the long term, the research community, scientists, the SAR community, and most importantly, our customers with demanding missions will benefit from this latest ICEYE innovation. This product is another element in using remote sensing to better understand and characterize what is happening and changing on the ground in all lighting and weather conditions.”
— John Cartwright, Head of Data Product at ICEYE

TRL11, Inc., has closed a pre-seed funding round of more than $3 million, which enables expansion of their team, leasing of a facility and the launch of two, prototype, video payloads to LEO — TRL11 aims to make full motion video (FMV) solutions commonplace in all space applications.

According to Nicol Verheem, company Founder and CEO, typical video solutions in space are far behind those used in the media and entertainment (M&E) industry, which has invested billions of dollars in advancing sensors, edge processing, transmission, and the AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence / Machine Language) of FMV over the past few decades. The M&E industry supports a much higher volume of video products in circulation, and typically has quick refresh cycles which fuel rapid and ongoing innovation. This helps hone and mature video products over time, which explains why M&E is ahead of the Aerospace industry.

Under his lead, TRL11 will be bringing some of the best video solutions and expertise from M&E into the nascent space market, targeting on-orbit applications such as mission confirmation, space domain awareness, and proximity operations like docking or debris removal.

As the common phrase “space is hard” suggests, the operating environment is uniquely harsh, but many technologies and techniques used in media map well to space, and with the right modifications and the correct support, can perform well in space.

“I’ve always been a science fiction space nerd, but I never thought it could be a career path. However the recent explosive growth in the number of launches to Low Earth Orbit creates some real challenges and thus exciting new opportunities, some of which can best — or sometimes only — be solved with full motion video solutions on-orbit. The bandwidth is obviously not there yet to support every one of the many applications of video that are possible in space, but it’ll come. We’ve been through similar transitions in other industries before, more than once. Time and time again, video finds a way to add new value to just about every industry on Earth. Space will be no different. That’s why I love video and why it will always continue to shine as a key enabling technology.”
— Nicol Verheem, TRL11 Founder and CEO, serial entrepreneur and Technical Oscar and Emmy award winner

About the company…
TRL11, Inc. designs and manufactures state-of-the-art full motion video solutions and the supporting subsystems for aerospace applications. Headquartered in Irvine, California, the company was started in 2022 and launched the first prototypes to orbit in less than a year. The name TRL11 is meant to imply taking the first step toward the next chapter of space exploration. e Vu CFO), will join Anthony Baker on the Board, representing the company.

Satellite Vu has announced that the company’s Series A2 of £12.7 million brings the firm’s total investment to £30.5 million in VC funding to accelerate the mission to provide sustainable solutions to global issues.

The A2 round was led by Molten Ventures, with participation from Seraphim Space Investment Trust PLC, A/O Proptech, Lockheed Martin, Ridgeline Ventures, Earth Sciences Foundation, and Stellar Ventures – all existing investors.

Satellite Vu’s space-enabled climate technology provides a valuable insight into economic activity, energy efficiency and carbon footprint for a range of industries including: Built Environment; Defense and Intelligence and Industrial Activity Monitoring. This data will enable industries, organizations and governments to take critical action toward Net Zero goals. Satellite Vu has already secured customer commitments through its Early Access Option Program (EAP) valued at more than £128 million ($160 million).

This Series A2 was an ‘up round’ for Satellite Vu, highlighting the confidence investors have in the company’s cutting-edge thermal satellite technology and their ready-to-buy revenue stream, which gives them an edge in the climate mission market.

The company’s upcoming satellite launch via SpaceX, slated for early June, is highly anticipated. Their first thermal monitoring satellite – aka ‘The World’s Thermometer’ – built in partnership with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), is ready for deployment and is expected to deliver valuable data to support Satellite Vu’s mission.

This funding will enable Satellite Vu to enter commercial operation, converting EAP customers to revenue bookings from Q4 2023, post launch, to bring unique new datasets to market, and to build out an organizational structure ready to scale post completion of a Series B round. Satellite Vu expects to go to market for a Series B raise post first launch, to complete the constellation of eight satellites to enable high frequency thermal monitoring at scale.

“This funding round puts us in a strong position to hit our commercialization goals over the next 12 months and build the foundations to enable rapid scale-up post-Series B. We are proud to have such meaningful support from our existing investors – it shows that we are on the right track, both to building an economically sustainable business and tackling the climate crisis.”
— Camilla Taylor, CFO, Satellite Vu

“We’re leading SatelliteVu’s funding round as it prepares for its June launch. Their unique technology tackles key climate issues, and we’re impressed with their commercial progress. Their $160m in early commitments is a stellar model of pre-launch sales for deep-tech companies, which other climate-tech firms could emulate.”
— George Chalmers, Head of Climate-tech at Molten Ventures

“In these extraordinary times of immense technological progress, Satellite Vu stands out as a trailblazing commercial enterprise at the forefront of harnessing space and data to revolutionise our approach to major climate change issues. With a remarkable commitment of over 160 million dollars in their EAP and the imminent launch of their first satellite, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to Anthony and the entire team on their exceptional achievements. Together, they prove that the sky is not the limit.”
— Patrick McCall, Venture Partner, Seraphim Space

“By providing data from the unique vantage point of space, Satellite Vu’s technology can support action to protect our planet and bring us closer to Net Zero. The commercial demand for these services is demonstrated by the customer commitments secured to date, and this impressive new funding round is a brilliant example of how support from UK Space Agency programmes is catalysing investment into the sector. I wish the team at Satellite Vu all the best for their upcoming satellite launch next month.”
— Dr. Paul Bate, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency

A few weeks ago, we launched our first Astranis satellite to GEO onboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The satellite is Arcturus, which is set to provide high-speed bandwidth to Alaska for our customer Pacific Dataport. I am extremely happy to report that our satellite has completed the orbital maneuvers necessary to arrive in its orbital slot in Geostationary Orbit (GEO), and has now completed a key end-to-end test connecting a gateway in Utah with multiple user terminals in Alaska for the very first time, with the payload performing above spec. The test was 100% successful.

Astranis has designed a new kind of satellite — and it works.

This test demonstrated the core functionality of Arcturus, with the payload fully powered on and including a test of Astranis’s proprietary software-defined radio — and it worked perfectly, on the first try. The test also demonstrated that the satellite could maintain tight positioning in its orbital slot, with high pointing accuracy, under total control of our Mission Operations team. That’s thanks to the successful operation of a variety of complex systems — avionics, power electronics, flight software, guidance navigation & control, onboard rocket thrusters, and more.

This means that we have a new way to connect the most remote and underserved parts of the planet. Our MicroGEO satellites will help get millions of people connected to the internet through our commercial customers, and importantly they are a new tool in the toolbox for the U.S. Department of Defense as it increases the resiliency of its fleet of satellites on orbit.

Achieving this milestone took years of work from some of the most talented hardware and software engineers in the world. I founded Astranis in 2015 with my co-founder and CTO, Ryan McLinko, and in the early years we wondered whether building a small comms satellite for geostationary orbit was even possible. We have now proved that it is.

It’s hard to overstate how many things had to go right for this demonstration to be a success:

• Executing the world’s first MicroGEO satellite development program — from initial R&D and design to assembly, test, launch, and on-orbit operations
• Completing a stable and thermally-regulated coast to geostationary orbit mounted to the second stage of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which required us to design a novel battery and thermal system bolted to the spare ESPA slot on our launch
• Successfully separating the spacecraft from the Falcon Heavy upper stage, quickly followed by deploying our solar arrays, boom, and subreflector — all mechanisms designed in house at Astranis
• Rapidly achieving a power-positive and thermally-balanced state in a near-GEO orbit
• Closing our TTC link, and acquiring telemetry and tracking data from the satellite — a milestone that we completed just 94 seconds after separation from the launch vehicle
• Gaining three-axis control of the vehicle, using a suite of sensors (gyros, sun sensors, star trackers) and actuators (reaction wheels, monopropellant thrusters)
• Demonstrating our ability to complete over-the-air (over-the-space!) updates to our flight software on orbit
• Commissioning our ground infrastructure, collecting telemetry from multiple ground stations all around the world, and commanding the satellite using our mission operations center in San Francisco
• Commissioning the satellite’s major systems — including nine separate Astranis-designed electronics assemblies, all of which are working as intended and without issue
• Completing an orbit raise maneuver — altitude raise, circularization, phasing relocation, and more — to traverse the GEO arc and settle precisely in our designated orbital slot above Alaska
• Powering on and doing initial checkout of our payload, including the Astranis-designed Software-Defined Radio, and all high-power amplifiers
• Demonstrating end-to-end communications in a key payload test
• Operating a cohesive team, on 24/7 shifts, flying the satellite and handling any issues that have come up with cool confidence

Achieving this kind success required the coordinated effort of hundreds of engineers. It is no small feat.

Importantly, working with our customer Pacific Dataport this satellite represents a major step forward for the people of Alaska. At full capacity, it will more than triple the amount of satellite bandwidth available in the state, bringing prices down and helping connect the 39% of the state that still lacks affordable access to reliable broadband internet.

It’s also a major step forward for Astranis. We are launching four more MicroGEO satellites later this year for customers around the world, and many more from there. Our orders over the next 24 months alone represent over $1 billion of satellite services, all based on our now-flight-proven design. But we’re just getting started. Stay tuned for more exciting news in the days and weeks to come.

Written by John Gedmark , “Cofounder & CEO of Astranis. Your friendly neighborhood rocket scientist.”

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB), a launch and space systems company, is preparing for the second of two dedicated Electron launches to deploy a constellation of storm monitoring satellites for NASA. This mission, named Coming To A Storm Near You, is scheduled for lift-off no earlier than 16:00 NZST on May 25^th from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula.

Launch Window Opens:
NZST | 16:00, May 25
UTC | 04:00, May 25
EDT | 00:00, May 25
PDT| 21:00, May 24

Coming To A Storm Near You marks Rocket Lab’s second of two TROPICS launches for NASA, following the first launch on May 8^th NZST. Like the previous launch, Coming To A Storm Near You will send a pair of shoebox-sized satellites to low Earth orbit to collect tropical storm data more frequently than other weather satellites. The TROPICS constellation (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats) will help increase understanding of deadly storms and improve tropical cyclone forecasts, complementing other NASA and partner satellites. The TROPICS CubeSats require launch to a specific orbit at an altitude of 550 kilometers and inclination of about 30 degrees and all four satellites need to be deployed into their operational orbit within a 60-day period ahead of the 2023 North American storm season which begins in June.

“The TROPICS constellation has the potential to save lives and improve our knowledge of deadly storms, so we’re immensely proud to be part of making it possible,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “With one pair of TROPICS satellites now safely in orbit, we’re pleased to be back on the pad just two weeks later ready for the next launch. Regular and reliable dedicated small sat launch is what we developed Electron and our launch sites for, so it’s a great feeling to be delivering on that for NASA.”

Coming To A Storm Near You will be Rocket Lab’s fifth Electron mission for 2023 and the Company’s 37^th launch overall since Rocket Lab’s first Electron launch in 2017. The TROPICS launches follow on from previous successful Electron missions for NASA, including the ELaNa-19 mission and CAPSTONE mission to the Moon.

The live launch webcast will be available at www.rocketlabusa.com/live-stream from around T-20 minutes on launch day.

With the market for smallsats predicted to grow consistently throughout this decade, the critical target for all suppliers remains to increase the performance and resilience of products whilst reducing their size, weight and power consumption (SWAP).

Inertial products being promoted by the Silicon Sensing team at this year’s Space-Comm are clear evidence of the level of progress the company has already made across all these parameters.

Each of the company’s non-ITAR MEMS (micro electro-mechanical systems) inertial products offers an effective alternative to equivalent, but far heavier and less robust, fiber optic or dynamically tuned gyro-based devices. Each offers ultra-reliable, sustained performance in this most severe operational environment.

On display on the stand at Space-Comm will be:

• The DMU41, a 9 degrees of freedom (DoF) inertial measurement unit (IMU). This is the highest performing silicon IMU available on the market today. Extremely compact, with low power consumption, it is ideal for small satellite positioning and navigation – as well as for installation in satellite launch vehicles.

• The CRH03 is a stand-alone gyro delivering precise inertial sensing performance that is extremely stable over time and temperature. Small, lightweight and rugged, with low power consumption and proven performance, CRH03 is also suited to satellite navigation and positioning tasks as well as to installation in inertial navigation units. CRH03 is available in both a housed and OEM configuration.   

• The PinPoint® gyro is only the size of your smallest fingernail (approx. 5mm x 6mm) gyro and yet delivers on performance, reliability and price. Available in both flat and orthogonal mounts, this gyro is applicable to many applications and is already proven in satellite balancing roles.

“As space becomes a more crowded environment – for example, with the approval and launch of new proliferated LEO satellite constellations – the systems and sensors used to control and balance these satellites must be able to maintain full functionality in what is an increasingly hectic, even hostile, environment – whilst delivering on SWAP. Our latest inertial systems and sensors set new standards in terms of their ruggedness, capability, size and cost. These are unprecedented times in the space sector as year by year we develop technologies that further extend frontiers and expand what is possible. We look forward to discussing new opportunities with the market at this year’s Space-Comm.”
— David Somerville, General Manager, Silicon Sensing

About Silicon Sensing Systems
Silicon Sensing Systems Ltd. is the market leader in silicon MEMS gyroscopes, accelerometers, and inertial measurement systems, specializing in high performance, reliability, and affordability. The company has delivered over 25 million MEMS sensors to thousands of customers worldwide and has a heritage in inertial sensing that can be traced back over 100 years. All today’s inertial sensors and systems are based on in-house, patented designs which are manufactured in Silicon Sensing’s state of the art MEMS foundry.