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Spaceflight Inc. has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for upcoming launches with Rocket Factory Augsburg AG (RFA) — this agreement formalizes the plan for Spaceflight to fly their Sherpa® orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) and other rideshare payloads on upcoming RFA missions from a variety of European launch sites, including from facilities in the United Kingdom, French Guiana and others — the companies are targeting mid-2024 for their first launch.

Leveraging its location in the hub of the German automobile manufacturing industry, RFA is minimizing launch system costs with its serial production and assembly approach. RFA ONE, a three-stage, 30-meter rocket can deliver up to 1,350 kg. to a polar Earth orbit.

The company successfully completed the first test campaign of their Helix flight configuration engine in July of 2022, confirming the firm’s milestone traction toward service commercialization. RFA has already signed launch contracts with the German government and about a dozen customers for launches starting in 2023. The RFA ONE rocket is expected to launch as many as 50 times a year in the future, delivering satellites into near-Earth orbit quickly and reliably at a highly competitive price point.

Spaceflight’s Sherpa family of space vehicles are designed to minimize development timelines while maximizing launch schedule reliability and mission assurance. Beyond functioning as a port expander, the modular and flexible transportation vehicles bridge the gap between where a launch vehicle drops its satellites off and the satellites’ final destination orbit – whether that’s LEO, trans-lunar and low-lunar orbits, or beyond to GEO. In addition to precise orbit insertion, Sherpa OTVs support payload hosting, as well as in-space servicing, such as spacecraft maintenance, infrastructure development and debris mitigation.

Earlier this month, Spaceflight successfully launched Sherpa-LTC, the company’s chemical propulsive OTV onboard a SpaceX Starlink mission. The high-thrust propulsive Sherpa successfully deployed from the Falcon 9 and is targeting a 310 km. circular orbit before igniting and transporting a customer payload to a 1,000 km. circular orbit. Previously, the company launched 50 payloads in 2021 from three different Sherpa OTVs, establishing a strong history of success with the program.

“Spaceflight pioneered and truly defined the rideshare market and we’re very excited to partner with them on future launches,” said Jörn Spurmann, Chief Commercial Officer of RFA. “Together with Spaceflight’s unmatched launch and in-space transportation expertise, we can provide the industry with more launch flexibility and options for competitively priced launches to LEO and beyond.”

“The demand for access to cost-effective, last-mile delivery launches is growing rapidly from customers with payloads of all sizes and types,” said Curt Blake, CEO and president of Spaceflight. “Having many different launch options across different price points, orbital destinations, and facility locations are all very important to our savvy spacecraft developer customers. RFA brings increased price competitiveness and launch frequency from many different launch locations throughout Europe. We’re looking forward to extending our launch vehicle portfolio for Sherpa OTVs and rideshare services to now include RFA ONE, and wish them well on their upcoming maiden flight.”

Spire Global, Inc., provider of space-based data, analytics and space services, announced a Space Services agreement with GHGSat, a leader in high-resolution methane monitoring from space, to expand its satellite constellation for greenhouse gas emissions monitoring. Under the agreement, Spire will launch three 16U satellites in 2023 that will carry GHGSat’s payload and provide the company with Spire’s robust, scalable, and simple-to-integrate API to effortlessly receive its data and operate its payloads.

Spire’s more than 350 years of space heritage will help GHGSat, which currently operates six small satellites, meet growing demand for its business of providing timely, accurate measurements of methane emissions from industrial sites worldwide. The data collected by its payload is used to monitor emissions from carbon-intensive industries such as oil and gas, coal mining, waste management and agriculture. GHGSat’s services are critical to detect methane leaks, quantify emissions inventories, support mitigation strategies, and help operators achieve their net-zero targets. Governments, research institutes and international organizations such as UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) also require transparent and accurate emissions data to better understand the industrial carbon footprint and advise on the most productive mitigation actions to fight climate change today.

“Monitoring greenhouse gas emissions to help fight climate change is a perfect example of how data from space can provide insights into the biggest challenges facing humanity,” said Joel Spark, Co-Founder and General Manager, Space Services, Spire. “We’re proud that GHGSat chose to leverage Spire’s proven space platform, end-to-end manufacturing facility, global ground station network and mission operations system to efficiently scale its constellation. Taking the complexity out of space so that great companies like GHGSat can focus on their core mission and solve global problems is exactly why we developed our Space Services offering.”

Spire Space Services has a subscription model that eliminates the upfront costs of building and maintaining infrastructure in space. Commercial and government organizations can deploy and operate a constellation of satellites, a hosted payload, or a software application in space with Spire’s established space, ground, and web infrastructure. Spire handles the end-to-end management, from manufacturing to launch to satellite operations, and the customer operates the system through a web API.

“Hosting GHGSat payloads on Spire satellites allows us to focus on monitoring rather than on satellite manufacturing and operations,” said Stephane Germain, CEO of GHGSat. “Having successfully completed and launched our initial satellite assets, GHGSat plans to add hosted payload solutions to complement our full satellite solutions to accelerate monitoring. We expect to seamlessly manage these three hosted payloads as part of our growing constellation of satellites and payloads in orbit, providing more facility-level emissions measurements for our customers at the lowest detection threshold available in the world today.”

OneWeb and Arianespace have signed a new agreement that follows the earlier suspension of the launches on September 13, 2022.

Following that suspension of OneWeb’s launches in March of 2022, OneWeb and Arianespace have now reached an agreement pursuant to which performance of the Launch Services Agreement may be resumed in the future. The terms of the settlement are confidential.

Arianespace is supporting OneWeb on its upcoming launches, including the performance of Dispenser Supply Services for two launches to be performed by NewSpace India Limited, part of India’s national space agency, ISRO.

Based on their unique heritage, OneWeb and Arianespace are determined to examine future opportunities together, especially on the Ariane 6 launch vehicle for the second generation of the smallsat constellation.

SpaceX is targeting Tuesday, September 13, for a Falcon 9 launch of 54 Starlink satellites to LEO from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The instantaneous launch window is at 10:10 p.m. ET (02:10 UTC on September 14) and a backup opportunity is available on Wednesday, September 14, at 9:48 p.m. ET (01:48 UTC on September 15), should such be required.

The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched CRS-22, Crew-3, Turksat 5B, Crew-4, and CRS-25.

Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

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

Blue Canyon Technologies, LLC, and SEAKR Engineering, LLC, wholly owned subsidiaries of Raytheon Technologies, have announced that they have delivered one, Saturn-class, microsat bus and have also completed acceptance testing of the first two of 12, Pit Boss Battle Management Command, Control and Communication payloads for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Blackjack Program.

Blue Canyon is providing ten, Saturn-class buses total, with the remaining nine expected to ship later in the year. The buses are BCT’s first flight units using the company’s new Kyber Electrical Power System and Hyperion Solar Arrays. Each bus includes advanced electric propulsion, a robust power system, command and data handling, radio frequency communications and dedicated payload interfaces capable of hosting several different Department of Defense payloads.

SEAKR Engineering has completed acceptance testing of the first two, flight units of the 12 Pit Boss Battle Management Command, Control and Communication payloads for the DARPA Blackjack constellation. These units have shipped for space vehicle Assembly, Integration and Test.

The Blackjack mission will develop and demonstrate critical elements of a global high-speed network in LEO. The goal of the Blackjack program is to show that a constellation of LEO satellites meets U.S. Department of Defense performance and payload requirements, at a significantly lower cost, with shorter design cycles and with easier and more frequent technology upgrades. The Blackjack program aims to establish an economy of scale not previously available with current National Security space assets, which are large, costly and would take years to replace if degraded or destroyed.

Blue Canyon built and delivered Blackjack’s ground test unit to Lockheed Martin in early May of this year. The remaining customized, Saturn-class buses are currently in production at BCT’s smallsat factory in Lafayette, Colorado.

SEAKR Engineering is manufacturing the payloads at their facilities in Centennial, Colorado.

“This is a momentous milestone for BCT’s Saturn microsatellite product line with the first-ever Saturn bus flight unit to achieve environmental testing,” said Jeff Schrader, president of Blue Canyon Technologies and SEAKR Engineering. “The accomplishment of qualifying and shipping this unit was no easy feat with teams working around the clock to run test after test to reduce risk and ensure success in the overall mission. It was a collaborative effort with Raytheon Intelligence & Space, BCT and SEAKR Engineering that further signifies confidence in our capabilities as an end-to-end spacecraft provider.”

“Pit Boss plays many critical roles for the Blackjack constellation by providing on-orbit mission autonomy, a space platform for DevSecOps Docker applications, network routing of optical satellite links, and high speed link encryption,” said Dave Anderson, SEAKR’s Vice President, Advanced Product Development and CTO. “The Pit Boss BMC3 has enough processing resources with margin to perform all these functionalities simultaneously.”

Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, is comprised of four business units: CubeSats, Microsats, Components, and Mission Operations. BCT 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. Microsatellites are manufactured at the 80,000 sq-ft Lafayette facility and CubeSats and components are manufactured in 40,000 sq-ft of dedicated facilities in Boulder, Colorado. BCT has supported missions for the U.S. Air Force, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and provided the Attitude Control Systems for the first interplanetary CubeSats, which successfully traveled to Mars. The company has been recognized with awards from Inc. Magazine’s 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies, the Best in Biz Award and the 2020 Tibbetts Award.

SEAKR Engineering is the leading-edge provider of advanced electronics for space applications. We design and manufacture processors, command and data handling systems, advanced payloads, and manned space hardware. Founded in 1982 to revolutionize spacecraft memory systems, today SEAKR continues forward innovation with state-of-the-art space communications processors capable of channelization and beamforming. SEAKR was acquired by Raytheon Technologies in 2021.

Raytheon Intelligence & Space, a Raytheon Technologies business, delivers the disruptive technologies our customers need to succeed in any domain, against any challenge. A developer of advanced sensors, cyber services and software solutions, Raytheon Intelligence & Space provides a decisive advantage to civil, military and commercial customers around the world.

According to a new research report from specialist IoT analyst firm Berg Insight, the global satellite IoT communications market is growing at a strong steady pace. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global satellite IoT subscriber base grew to surpass 3.9 million in 2021. The number of satellite IoT subscribers will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40.3 percent to reach 21.2 million units in 2026.

Only about 10 percent of the Earth’s surface has access to terrestrial connectivity services which leaves a massive opportunity for satellite IoT communications. Satellite connectivity provides a complement to terrestrial cellular and non-cellular networks in remote locations, especially useful for applications in agriculture, asset tracking, maritime and intermodal transportation, oil and gas industry exploration, utilities, construction and governments. Both incumbent satellite operators and more than two dozen new initiatives are now betting on the IoT connectivity market. This new study covers a total of 44 satellite IoT operators.

“Iridium, Orbcomm, Inmarsat and Globalstar are the largest satellite IoT network operators today”, says Johan Fagerberg, Principal Analyst at Berg Insight. Iridium grew its subscriber base by 21 percent in the last year and reached the number one spot serving 1.3 million subscribers. Originally a dedicated satellite operator, Orbcomm has transitioned into an end-to-end solution provider, delivering services on its own satellite network as well as being a reseller partner of Inmarsat and others. At the end of 2021, the company had 1.1 million satellite IoT subscribers on its own and Inmarsat’s networks.

At the same time Globalstar reached 0.42 million subscribers. Other players with connections in the tens of thousands include for instance Kineis in France and Thuraya in the UAE. In addition to the incumbent satellite operators a number of new initiatives have appeared on the market recently. Examples of some high-profile projects are Astrocast, AST SpaceMobile, CASC/CASIC, E-Space, Fleet Space Technologies, Hubble Network, Kepler Communications, Kineis, Ligado Networks, Lynk, Myriota, Omnispace, Skylo, Swarm Technologies (SpaceX) and Totum.

Many of these are based on low-Earth orbit nano satellite concepts. While some rely on proprietary satellite connectivity technologies to support IoT devices, several are starting to leverage terrestrial wireless IoT connectivity technologies including OQ Technology, AST SpaceMobile, Omnispace, Sateliot, Galaxy Space, Ligado Networks, Lynk, Skylo and Starlink (3GPP 4G/5G); EchoStar Mobile, Fossa Systems, Lacuna Space and Eutelsat (LoRaWAN); Hubble Network (Bluetooth); and Eutelsat (Sigfox). “The terrestrial technologies will grow in importance in the next five years and collaborations between satellite operators and mobile operators exploring new hybrid satellite-terrestrial connectivity opportunities such as the recent T-Mobile/SpaceX agreement will become common”, concludes Mr Fagerberg.

On Sunday, September 4 at 10:09 p.m. ET, SpaceX launched 51 Starlink satellites and Spaceflight’s Sherpa-LTC, an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV), to orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

This was the seventh flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Arabsat-6A, STP-2, COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2, KPLO, and now three Starlink missions.

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has successfully test fired a reused Rutherford first stage engine for the first time – a significant technical achievement in Rocket Lab’s efforts to make the firm’s Electron launch vehicle the world’s first, reusable, orbital, small rocket.

Rocket Lab conducted the full duration, full-thrust test fire of the refurbished Rutherford engine earlier this week at the company’s engine test facility. The engine was previously successfully launched to space and returned to Earth during Rocket Lab’s recent recovery mission, ‘There And Back Again’, launched on May 2, 2022. The mission was the first time Rocket Lab attempted a mid-air capture of Electron’s first stage, using parachutes on the rocket to slow its descent from space before a helicopter captured the rocket from the sky as it approached Earth’s surface. The Electron stage was ultimately released for a soft ocean splashdown and was then collected by vessel and returned to Rocket Lab’s production complex.

The refurbished Rutherford engine passed all of the same rigorous acceptance tests Rocket Lab performs for every engine, including 200 seconds of engine fire and multiple restarts. Data from the test fire shows the engine produced full thrust of 21kNs within 1000 milliseconds of ignition and performed to the same standard of a newly-built Rutherford engine. This Rutherford engine will now continue as an engine life-leader for future Rutherford development.

Preparation for Rocket Lab’s next recovery mission, which will include an attempt to catch Electron with a helicopter again but this time fly it back to land, is continuing at pace and is scheduled to launch before the end of the year.

Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said, “We’ve always been at the forefront of innovation with Electron, having pushed the boundaries of many technologies including carbon composites, electric turbo-pumps and 3D printed rocket engines. Now, we’re leading the pack once again bringing reusability to small launch vehicles. Being able to re-fly Electron with minimal refurbishment is the ultimate goal, and so the fact that the recovered components on this engine performed on the test stand with minimal rework, is further validation that we’re on the correct path. If we can achieve this high level of performance from engine components recovered from the ocean, then I’m optimistic and incredibly excited about what we can do when we bring back dry engines under a helicopter next time.”

A video of the Rutherford test fire is available for viewing at this direct link…

The latest Ground Segment Market report by Euroconsult projects the ground station segment to remain quite stable over the 2022 to 2031 time period, with a year-on-year growth of 1.4% and a market value forecast of $3.6 billion by 2031, all driven by the growing demand for data and services.

However, this stability hides the transformation towards very high throughput connectivity and non-geostationary (NGSO) constellations at the SATCOM level. Despite delays, NGSO constellation deployment is already counting for most of the growth at this level, with terrestrial competition for video services playing a major role in stunting the growth of the satellite broadcast market value. The terrestrial competition for video services is also playing a major role in the decline of the satellite broadcast market value, despite a temporary and limited growth due to the C-band spectrum reallocation process in the U.S.

The commercial user terminal segment is also expected to experience a major surge in market value due to the sustained effort to build up NGSO constellations, alongside the overall growth in data traffic over satellite networks, with an expected 7.8% compound annual growth up to 2031. This, in turn, will contribute to the acceleration of flat panel antenna (FPA) development, especially the electronically steered variants, as they are better suited to track multiple satellites. Electronically steered antennas (ESAs) are thus expected to reach more than half of the sold commercial user terminals by 2031.

The defence segment is also witnessing a demand around the development of new generation systems, including core ground stations and user terminals. Several European countries have already signed ground segment contracts ahead of new satellite deployments, while the U.S.’s defense sector is still experiencing significant demand for the sustainment of existing terminals. Instead, the U.S.’s greater opportunity is expected to come from the renewal and augmentation of approximately 17,000 terminals currently in use by the different military forces.

The deployment of software-definition in both satellite systems and within ground infrastructure will also stand as a key item in the product roadmap of many ground segment suppliers, with a need to partly transition from a role of hardware to technology suppliers. Satellite operators are relying more and more on virtualization in place of physical hardware, reducing expenditures and improving ground segment flexibility.

Ground Segment as a Service (GSaaS) providers – especially in EO – are deploying global networks to offer services to satellite operators, shifting the cost from capital expenditure (CAPEX) to operating expenses (OPEX), bolstered by the proliferation of smallsat constellations. The GSaaS market value has, so far, grown proportionally with the pace of deployment of smallsats on a trend to peak at $250 million by 2026. However, the window for market expansion is limited, as the market will deflate as it matures to $200 million by the end of the decade.

Additionally, the ground segment industry is not immune to the near-term challenges of supply chain issues and the cost inflation of raw materials and components.

Euroconsult’s newly released annual Ground Segment Market Prospects report provides a strategic overview of all ground-based elements for key downstream services, with in-depth analyses and forecasts to capture the unique dynamics of the ground segment industry. The report also assesses global ground station trends and user terminals for SATCOM and EO – for both Civilian and Defense actors – as well as examining key players in the industry. Visit Euroconsult’s Digital Platform to find out more.

On Tuesday, August 30 at 10:40 p.m. PT, SpaceX‘s Falcon 9 launched 46 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

This was the seventh flight for this Falcon 9 first stage booster that previously launched Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, DART, and now five Starlink missions.

The first stage booster supporting this mission previously launched Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, DART, and four Starlink missions.

Following stage separation, the Falcon 9’s first stage landed on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship stationed in the Pacific Ocean so it can potentially be used again.