• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Featured
  • More News ⌄
    • SatNews
    • SatMagazine
    • MilSatMagazine
  • Events ⌄
    • MilSat Symposium
    • SmallSat Symposium
    • Satellite Innovation
  • Contacts
  • SUBSCRIPTION

SmallSat News

You are here: Home / Archives for minisat

minisat

A Conversation with Jonata Puglia, Chief Executive Officer at Leaf Space

August 11, 2020 by minisat

Hi Jonata, the annual Small Satellite Conference has just concluded, what are the key take away from Leaf Space?

It has been a week dense of emotions and discoveries. After some months of lock downs across the globe, we have been able to convey again with many of our current and future clients, and industry colleagues too. We also realized that the new space economy never actually stopped. It continued working to have commercially operational smallsat constellations despite the inevitable launch delays. Most of our customers are pushing to get their satellites in orbit as soon as possible and at the same time focusing on their next-generation satellites. In turn, we are scaling up of our ground network and improving the services overall to always provide them a simple, reliable and cost-effective Ground Segment as a Service solution.

How is your Leaf Line ground network growing?

Leaf Line Expands with a New GS in Santa Maria, Azores

During spring, in the middle of the COVID-19 outbreak, we secured a series A funding that triggered the scale up plan of Lead Space. We are now proceeding in activating new sites worldwide and installing new ground stations. We have just cut the ribbon on our new GS in the Azores that will provide enhanced coverage in the Atlantic, and we have few ground stations ready to be shipped to new sites in New Zealand, North America and the equatorial region. We are also installing additional antennas in our historic location in Spain, and soon we will have a new location in East Europe. The pandemic has slowed down the roll out planned for Q2 2020 a bit, but now we are catching up. All these new locations are very attractive not only for satellite missions, our main vertical, but also for the increasing need coming from new and established launch vehicle operators.

Tell me more about launch vehicles, and how Leaf Space is supporting this part of the market.

In 2019 Leaf Space was selected to support the final testing campaign of Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne vehicle, an experience that has been really fruitful to gain operational know-how.  Right now, we are developing new solutions to better support this kind of test and launch campaign with an “as a Service” model, that is our real key added value. All this added to the fact that our ground stations are flexible and compact so they can be easily deployed in different spaceports or launch facilities. Also, we have started providing LEOP services to satellites also through Launch Brokers, which provides a better and more comprehensive service to their customers.

Why should clients buy Ground Segment Services from Leaf Space and not build their own network or rely on other providers?

For microsatellite operators, the ground segment in general is seen as a key part of their business, but as it is not the core of their business managing this internally is actually seen as a disadvantage. What they really want to focus on is harvesting data from space, processing that data and delivering it to the end users. In addition, efficiently managing a ground station network is not an easy task. If you think about the multiple hardware and software blocks needed to guarantee a secure and reliable communication, all the regulatory challenges and the specific skills you need to deploy and run a network, this is clearly something that many operators handover to a specialized partner. This is especially true if your partner can provide a more reliable and cost-effective solution thanks to the distributed nature of our network and high degree of automation, from load balancing to rescheduling. We’ve made a webinar on this topic during the Smallsat Conference that will be published soon!

What are your main objectives for the upcoming months?

Well, we have customers in the major part of the rockets scheduled to launch from now to the end of the year and we will support them not only during LEOPs but also through our services Leaf Line and Leaf Key.

On the R&D side we’re working on both increasing the performance of the Ground Stations composing our network, to allow faster data downlink and even support higher frequencies, but also on supporting an even wider range of MODCOD schemes and protocols in order to decrease the onboarding time of our customers.

On a revenue perspective, last year we had already significant revenues, and we plan to double this year and have a quite growing trend after that.

To get more traction on the US market we will soon open a new subsidiary there; we already have people working from the US, but we think that a legal entity will provide us even more visibility both to commercial and institutional market.

So, we’re quite busy!

Jonata Puglia, Leaf Space CEO

Filed Under: Featured, News

Satnews Perspectives Video Interview with Daniel L. Jablonsky, President and CEO, Maxar Technologies

July 8, 2020 by minisat

Daniel L. Jablonsky was appointed to the role of President and Chief Executive Officer of Maxar Technologies and to the Company’s Board of Directors on January 13, 2019.

Previously, Mr. Jablonsky had served as President of DigitalGlobe since October 2017, when the company became part of Maxar Technologies. He joined DigitalGlobe in 2012 as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, and also held the role of General Manager, International Defense & Intelligence from 2015 to 2017.

Prior to DigitalGlobe, Mr. Jablonsky was a shareholder at the law firm of Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schreck, LLP from 2011 to March 2012, where he practiced corporate and securities law. From 2010 to 2011, Mr. Jablonsky served as the Interim Co-General Counsel of Flextronics International Ltd., and from 2007 to 2010, he held the role of Senior Corporate Counsel, Securities and Mergers & Acquisitions at Flextronics.

Mr. Jablonsky previously was in-house counsel at UBS Financial Services, Inc., served in the enforcement division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and practiced corporate and securities law with O’Melveny & Myers LLP. Mr. Jablonsky holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the United States Naval Academy and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Washington School of Law. Prior to law school, Mr. Jablonsky was an officer and nuclear engineer in the U.S. Navy.

Filed Under: Featured, News

Perspectives Video Interview with Stephen Jurczyk, Associate Administrator, NASA

June 26, 2020 by minisat

Speaking of the DEMO-2 mission to the ISS, I’m very proud of the NASA and Space X team and the courage of Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. This event was something for the nation and world to rally around during these challenging times.

– Stephen Jurczyk

Mr. Stephen Jurczyk became NASA’s associate administrator, the agency’s highest-ranking civil servant position, effective May, 2018. Prior to this assignment he was the associate administrator of the Space Technology Mission Directorate, effective since June, 2015.  In this position he formulated and executed the agency’s Space Technology programs, focusing on developing and demonstrating transformative technologies for human and robotic exploration of the solar system in partnership with industry and academia.

He previously was Director at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. Named to this position in May 2014, he headed NASA’s first field Center, which plays a critical role in NASA’s aeronautics research, exploration and science missions.  Jurczyk served as Langley’s Deputy Center Director from August 2006 until his appointment as director.

Jurczyk began his NASA career in 1988 at Langley in the Electronic Systems Branch as a design and integration & test engineer developing several space-based Earth remote sensing systems.  From 2002 to 2004 Jurczyk was director of engineering, and from 2004 to 2006 he was director of research and technology at Langley where he led the organizations’ contributions to a broad range of research, technology and engineering disciplines contributing to all NASA mission areas.

Jurczyk received several awards during his NASA career, including two NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals, the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive in 2006, and the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Executive in 2016 — the highest honors attainable for federal government leadership.

Jurczyk is a graduate of the University of Virginia where he received Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1984 and 1986.  He is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Filed Under: Featured, News

Perspectives Video Interview with Peter Beck, Chief Executive, Rocket Lab

June 18, 2020 by minisat

Successes abound with smallsat launch after smallsat launch with turnaround times bound to please…


Peter Beck is the founder and chief executive of Rocket Lab, a space systems company and the global leader in dedicated small satellite launch. Founded in 2006, Rocket Lab builds and launches rockets and satellites that provide access to space for organizations like NASA, the NRO, DARPA, the United States Air Force and the commercial space sector.


An associate professor in space systems, Peter led the development of ground-breaking Electron launch vehicle, which in 2019 was the 4th most frequently launched rocket in the world. Peter also leads the satellite division at Rocket Lab which is making it faster and easier to get the ideas of tomorrow on orbit today.

Filed Under: Featured, News

Primary Sidebar

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019

© 2019–2025 SatNews

x
Sign Up Now!

Enjoy a free weekly newsletter with recent headlines from the global SmallSat industry.

Invalid email address
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Thanks for subscribing! You will now receive weekly SmallSat News updates.
We love our advertisers.
And you will too!

Please disable Ad Blocker to continue... We promise to keep it unobtrusive.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Thanks for subscribing! Please check your email for further instructions.