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.

Astra Space, Inc. has been selected by Airbus OneWeb Satellites, LLC (“AOS”) to supply the Astra Spacecraft Engine for integration into the portfolio of Arrow commercial smallsats manufactured by AOS.

Airbus OneWeb Satellites LLC is a joint venture between Airbus and OneWeb. AOS manufactures satellites for the OneWeb commercial constellation and Airbus customers in Merritt Island, Florida. AOS is producing satellites for Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Inc., in support of U.S. government programs.

Astra’s mission is to Improve Life on Earth from Space® by creating a healthier and more connected planet. Today, Astra offers one of the lowest cost-per-launch dedicated orbital launch services of any operational launch provider in the world, and one of the industry’s first flight-proven electric propulsion systems for satellites, Astra Spacecraft Engine. Astra delivered its first commercial launch to low Earth orbit in 2021, making it the fastest company in history to reach this milestone, just five years after it was founded in 2016. Astra (NASDAQ: ASTR) was the first space launch company to be publicly traded on Nasdaq. Visit astra.com to learn more about Astra.

Alba Orbital Inc. and SAB Launch Services S.r.l. (SAB LS) have signed an agreement to fly six AlbaPod pico-satellite deployers, and respective PocketQubes, on Arianespace Vega missions VV25 and VV26. This agreement facilitates the first ever PocketQube launch from Europe, using Arianespace’s Vega launch vehicle to deliver them to orbit.

PocketQubes are the world’s smallest commercial satellites, measuring at 5x5x5 cm. with a mass of 250 g. per unit — no bigger than a rubik’s cube. These tiny satellites are bringing down the barriers to space access, as their small form factor facilitates more affordable launches for smaller organisations compared to cubesats.

Italy-based SAB is part of SAB Group and provides launch services on European launchers, including Vega and Vega C multi-payload missions.

Alba Orbital continues to trailblaze in the field of pico-satellite engineering, having now become the world leading PocketQube rideshare company with the most PocketQube satellites on-orbit. The Y-Combinator backed company has successfully launched a total of 23 satellites to orbit over three missions with launch partners, SpaceX and Rocket Lab, including their own fleet of Earth imaging spacecraft.

The upcoming Vega launches will mark a significant milestone in European spaceflight history, as this will be the first time PocketQubes have launched from European soil.

SAB-LS has a leading position in the European launch service market dedicated to smallsats with four successful missions accomplished launching institutional as well as commercial smallsats from International customers.

This agreement comes after the success of the Vega C maiden flight. The partnership between SAB and Alba Orbital highlights the modularity of the SSMS Dispenser on Vega, which is a modular structure that can be seamlessly configured in order to be adapted to the specific satellite aggregate. With the SSMS dispenser, clients have access to increased flexibility through a diverse launch schedule with multiple launch opportunities within a year, offering more orbits, different inclinations, and more.

The next Vega C missions are planned before the end of 2022. In early 2023, the first Vega C rideshare mission with the SSMS Dispenser will be launched, hosting a vast aggregate of smallsats and cubesats.

“We’ve witnessed the demand for PocketQube launches skyrocket after every successful mission we’ve flown”, said Tom Walkinshaw, CEO and Founder of Alba Orbital. “We’re thrilled to be working with SAB on VV25 and VV26 Vega missions, accelerating our launch cadence to provide a reliable quarterly flight schedule for our rideshare customers.”

“We are stoked to be providing the launch for the first pocket cube deployer ever to be launched on Vega”, said Marco Mariani, CEO of SAB Launch Services. “For us, Alba Orbital is becoming a strategic partner, with a significant number of hardware on multiple launches. This launch highlights the flexibility of our end-to-end launch services and positions SAB in the forefront of a market populated by increasing numbers of smallsats and microsats.”

Alba Orbital (UK, USA, Germany) is the world’s leading PocketQube satellite manufacturer and launch broker. Alba is a vertically integrated NewSpace company ‘democratizing access to space’, providing turnkey solutions from advanced pico-satellite platforms, low-cost launch opportunities, and ground station services. Alba has worked with over 30 customers across three continents, including prestigious clients such as Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University and TU Delft.

SAB Launch Services S.r.l. (SAB-LS) is a company that is part of SAB group and offers launch services on European Launchers for all varities of smallsats. SAB-LS offers “end to end” services including launch procurement, separation system procurement, integration activities of the satellite on the launch vehicle structure, pre- and post-launch support. Due to the flexible and direct access to launch capacity afforded by the SAB-LS partnership with Arianespace, SAB-LS is the key European firm serving smallsat customers looking to launch on European vehicles.