Arianespace has given the “green light” go-ahead for its Vega launch on November 16, which will orbit a pair of European-built satellites: Spain’s SEOSAT-Ingenio and TARANIS of France.

The approval followed today’s launch readiness review in French Guiana, which confirmed the preparedness of Vega, along with the payloads, the Spaceport’s launch site infrastructure, and the network of tracking stations.

All is now set for the nighttime liftoff on November 16 at precisely 10:52 p.m. local time in French Guiana (1:52 UTC on November 17), initiating a flight that will last 1 hr. and 42 min. until final payload separation. Total payload performance is estimated at 1,192 kg.

This mission to Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO) is designated VV17, and it will be performed from the Spaceport’s ZLV launch complex – where Vega was assembled and now stands in a flight-ready configuration, protected by a mobile gantry that will be withdrawn prior to liftoff.

Flight VV17 will mark Arianespace’s seventh mission in 2020, and is the company’s second this year using a lightweight Vega – which is one of three launch vehicles operated by Arianespace at the Spaceport, along with the medium-lift Soyuz and heavyweight Ariane 5. Vega’s production prime contractor is Avio.

Vega began operations from Europe’s Spaceport in 2012, with the upcoming Flight VV17 to become its 17th. SEOSAT-Ingenio and TARANIS are to be the 84th and 85th satellites orbited by this vehicle – and the 745th and 746th lofted on an Arianespace mission overall.

For this latest Vega flight, the launcher is equipped with a Vega Secondary Payload Adaptor (VESPA), which enables the multi-satellite payload to be carried and deployed. VESPA is produced by Airbus Defence and Space in Spain for Avio.

SEOSAT-Ingenio will be released first during the Vega flight sequence, deployed from atop the VESPA structure. As the initial Spanish Earth Observation (EO) satellite, this spacecraft was built by an industrial consortium of Spanish space-sector companies led by Airbus Defence and Space. It will be orbited for the European Space Agency (ESA) at the benefit of Spain’s CDTI (Center for Development of Industrial Technology). The Spanish Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) will own and operate SEOSAT-Ingenio.

TARANIS is installed inside VESPA, and will be deployed to complete Arianespace’s Flight VV17 – sending this spacecraft on its scientific mission to observe the mysterious red sprites, blue jets, elves and sprite halos that occur at altitudes of 20 to 100 km. above thunderstorms. It is being launched for the French CNES space agency as both customer and spacecraft prime contractor.

Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Blue Canyon Technologies, a provider of smallsats and spacecraft systems components.

Closure of the acquisition, expected by early 2021, is subject to the completion of customary conditions and regulatory approvals. Blue Canyon Technologies will report into Raytheon Intelligence & Space upon closing.

Based in Boulder, Colorado with more than 200 employees, Blue Canyon Technologies was founded in 2008. The company currently has more than 90 satellites in production, and has supported missions for the U.S. Air Force, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Executive Comment

“The space market is rapidly expanding and our customers need comprehensive solutions faster than ever before,” said Roy Azevedo, President of Raytheon Intelligence & Space. “What makes Blue Canyon Technologies the right fit for our business is its agile, innovative culture and expertise in small satellite systems and technologies. This acquisition enables us to deliver a broader range of solutions to support our customers’ space missions – from sensing subsystems to mission systems integration and from launch and range support to on-orbit operations.“

Satellogic has successfully launched 10 new satellites, all delivered to sun-synchronous LEO at 3:18:50 am UTC on November 6, 2020.

This launch positions Satellogic as a global leader in high-resolution data collection from orbit. Satellogic’s increased orbital capacity now enables access to as many as four daily revisits of any point of interest and the collection of more than 4 million sq. km per day in high-resolution imagery. Satellogic’s on-orbit fleet is now comprised of 21 satellites, 14 of which are used to deliver high-resolution data to customers.

The company’s newest generation of satellites also operates at 0.7 meter resolution, enabling a more detailed view of the globe for more precise decision making. Through the ongoing refinement of sub-meter imagery, Satellogic plans to further drive down the cost of high-frequency geospatial analytics for existing and new Dedicated Satellite Constellation customers in 2021.

Over the course of 2020, Satellogic has made significant strides toward its goal of building a constellation capable of delivering frequent revisits of the entire planet at a price that will set a new standard for access and affordability in this market. Today’s dedicated launch follows successful launches in January and September and significantly expands the company’s in-orbit capacity.

The 10 new satellites launched today will further expand the company’s data-delivery capabilities, enabling Satellogic to meet the growing demand for their unique Satellite-as-a-Service model. By providing access to Dedicated Satellite Constellations (DSC), Satellogic enables governments to develop national geospatial imaging programs with no capital outlay and no technical risk.

Through the company’s DSC offering, state and local governments gain control of a fleet of satellites over their area of interest, including tasking, downloading, and processing capabilities. Geospatial analytics deliver insights that governments can use to improve or protect their environments, including border, resource, and infrastructure monitoring.

Executive Comments

“Timely access to geospatial analytics enables governments and key decision makers to build resilient processes and maintain their competitive edge, particularly in times of uncertainty or dramatic change,” said Satellogic Founder and CEO, Emiliano Kargieman. “We’re excited to put the power of our growing constellation directly in the hands of our customers and empower them to make better decisions, supported by up-to-date and high-resolution geospatial imagery.”

“At Satellogic we’ve continued to validate our vertically integrated approach. We’re not only manufacturing our spacecraft at scale but also continuing to develop new technologies that extend our competitive advantage,” said Satellogic Founder and CTO, Gerardo Richarte. “Leveraging our unique camera design, for instance, we can maximize the area we can image from a small aperture, giving us a 10X advantage in efficiency over any other small satellite platform in the market.”

ST Engineering iDirect has successfully completed their first Over-the-Air (OTA) testing of iDirect’s Multi-Frequency Time Division Multiple Access (MF-TDMA) return link on the Telesat Phase-1 Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite.

This milestone achievement demonstrated dynamic sharing of bandwidth among multiple terminals within a LEO constellation, a capability that extends the capacity and flexibility of Telesat’s multi-beam beam hopping architecture, and opens up a wide range of use cases for Telesat’s LEO customers in the commercial, government, and defense markets for land, land-mobile, aeronautical, maritime, and other applications.

The testing was conducted at Telesat’s Allan Park facility and featured ST Engineering iDirect’s VSAT platform networked across multiple satellite modems. The iDirect platform was able to compensate fully for the LEO satellite link dynamics, including time, frequency, signal variation and Doppler effects. Short guard times (the time intervals required between radio bursts to prevent self-interference) were achieved, comparable in length to guard times used on GEO satellite links, without compromising capacity or spectral efficiency.

The ability to leverage MF-TDMA to efficiently share bandwidth on satellite ground-to-space links improves the capacity, performance and affordability of broadband services delivered over LEO satellite constellations.

To put the link to the test, the team conducted a video conference with engineers at Allan Park and achieved seamless connectivity, low jitter and low packet loss, resulting in a high Quality of Experience (QoE) that exceeded the level typically achieved over GEO satellite networks.

Executive Comments

“This is a significant success for the ST Engineering iDirect and Telesat teams,” said Bart Van Poucke, VP of Product Management at ST Engineering iDirect. “We have achieved the benefits of MF-TDMA efficiency whilst unlocking the low latency offered by LEO satellites. This demonstration confirms the wide addressable market for LEO and particularly for applications that require mission-critical communications. We are proud to have been part of these tests and thank Telesat for the opportunity.”

“Satellite service providers are eager to take advantage of Telesat LEO’s affordable, low latency, high-speed connectivity to deliver secure Internet, VPN, video conferencing and cloud applications to their customers,” stated Erwin Hudson, Telesat’s VP of LEO. “I congratulate the ST Engineering iDirect engineering team on their successful testing campaign. They demonstrated the powerful advantages that MF-TDMA brings to LEO networks, a capability that can provide increased flexibility and higher capacity for our customers while allowing us to support a greater number of end users on each LEO satellite.”

Axelspace Corporation has launched their business continuity plan (BCP) support service to conduct timely situational analysis in response to accidents and natural disasters, using satellite imagery data.

In preparation for occurrence of incidents, including unexpected events and accidents, BCP support service will periodically monitor the designated areas by capturing with satellite imagery data. It allows to take immediate control of the crisis situation, verify the situation of target assets and the surrounding environment in a confidential manner, by conducting emergency capturing based on predetermined terms.

In addition, monitoring of the current situation and verification of the surrounding environment during the recovery phase is made possible, without going to the actual location, because of periodic monitoring prior to the occurrence of the incident.

In many cases, situational analysis is conducted in an unplanned approach as the crisis unfolds, leading to difficulty in conducting verification, especially in areas restricted to enter. On the other hand, the conventional satellite imagery data takes time to arrange for the capture and has the issue of high cost for emergency capturing order.

With this BCP support service, the plan starts as low as US$500/month to capture every three months during the normal times and in times of crisis, will automatically capture, deliver the data and in addition, can provide data analysis service based on the client’s needs.

Compared to putting a new order request at the time of incident occurrence, the BCP support service plan has a huge advantage on ease of ordering, handling speed and cost, although there will be a separate emergency handling service cost.

Reach out for details, as the emergency handling cost will be different, based on the kind of service required at the time of crisis and the latency requirements upon the occurrence of the incidents.

In delivering the BCP support service, Axelspace will mainly be using AxelGlobe, the company’s proprietary rapid Earth observation monitoring platform, currently in development.

The first GRUS, the satellite used for AxelGlobe, was launched in December 2018 and in service already. 4 additional satellites will be launched soon, making it a 5-satellite system, allowing to monitor anywhere in the world every 3 days.

D-Orbit secured 15 million euros financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB) in September, marking the first time that the EIB has funded a space firm — the funds will advance the expansion of the company, whose goal is to redefine the standards of the orbital transportation industry.

In March, the company had already secured a funding round of more than $10 million led by the Italian Neva F.I.R.S.T., Intesa Sanpaolo’s Corporate Venture Capital investment vehicle managed by Neva SGR, and some new and existing investors. Among the new investors are 808 Ventures, an Australian tech investor, the US-based View Different, Savim and two Italian private investment vehicles Geostazionaria and ClubDealOnline (contributing about $3 million).

Existing investors, such as Seraphim Capital, Noosphere Ventures, Elysia Capital, CDP Venture Capital Sgr., Nova Capital and TT Venture, also reaffirmed their commitment and trust in the company by incrementing their initial investments.

D-Orbit recently launched their ION Satellite Carrier, a satellite platform developed and operated in house that is able to host several satellites and deploy them in their precise operational slot in one or more orbits and the firm is completing the ground testing campaign of a new satellite carrier destined for a second, fully booked ION mission.

Executive Comment

“We are truly grateful to all our shareholders, those who have just joined our Company and those who have believed in us from the very beginning, like Indaco SGR, Comoventures, and Il Club degli Investitori,” said Luca Rossettini, Founder and CEO of D-Orbit. “Their trust and support have enabled us to carry on with our roadmap through these extraordinary times reaching exceptional objectives.”

Mynaric has been selected by Telesat to supply multiple units of its flagship CONDOR optical, inter-satellite, link terminals to DARPA’s Blackjack Track B program.

The terminals are scheduled to be delivered in mid-2021 to DARPA’s Blackjack System Integrator with satellites scheduled to launch in the latter part of 2021. The launch will be the inaugural ride to space for Mynaric’s flagship CONDOR terminals – a key milestone and final trial for the product’s successful market introduction.

As part of the deal, Mynaric will also establish the industry’s first laser communication interoperability lab at its Los Angeles premises. The lab will be equipped with a link testbed capable of emulating conditions in space and testing inter-vendor operability – a key requirement of DARPA for its proliferated LEO constellation plans.

The soon-to-be-established interoperability lab will provide laser communication vendors selected as part of the Blackjack program with the opportunity to verify their compatibility with Mynaric’s terminals and between each other. It is intended to serve as a hub and enabler for testing interoperability and to help establish a common laser communication standard within the Blackjack program and potentially beyond.

Blackjack is a joint technology demonstration project by DARPA and the U.S. Space Force to evaluate utility and concepts of operation for a large-scale proliferated low Earth orbit satellite constellation. The overarching goal of the program is to leverage developments from the commercial sector to create a generic satellite bus and payloads for defense purposes. Mynaric’s CONDOR terminal, specifically developed for mass deployment and under stringent low size, weight, power and cost requirements (SWaP-C), is a natural fit for the program.

This award represents further validation that the laser communication market is now experiencing an inflection point and is moving from concept to implementation. Current developments are heavily driven by the fact that procurement for government is changing from acquiring bespoke projects to industrialized commercial products – especially in the USA.

Mynaric expects this to become the standard for how governmental agencies will work at large and globally in the future as it allows for the leveraging of commercial industrial achievements most effectively. As such, initial contract awards from the governmental markets are considered a precursor to the wider establishment of civil and commercial large-scale aerospace communication networks of the future.

Executive Comments

“We are very happy to welcome Telesat and DARPA as inaugural launch customers for our CONDOR terminals and we are very much looking forward to supporting the mission’s target to demonstrate interoperability between different vendors. Interoperability allows not just DARPA but all of our customers to de-risk their supply chains and we expect it to work as a catalyst accelerating the large-volume deployment of laser communication systems. Consequently, Mynaric aims to take a leading role in establishing open industry standards for laser communications and it is an honor to host the industry’s first interoperability lab at our facilities in Los Angeles,” said Bulent Altan, CEO, Mynaric.

“Optical Inter-Satellite Links are the essential building block for next generation commercial and government space networks. Mynaric has developed impressive laser communications terminals that we will be demonstrating on-orbit under the DARPA Blackjack program. We expect that Mynaric, as a part of Telesat’s Blackjack team, will show the way to affordable ultra-high bandwidth laser communications capability for future resilient government space networks,” said Don Brown, GM, Telesat U.S. Services.

On Sunday, October 18, at 8:25 a.m. EDT, 12:25 UTC, SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Falcon 9’s first stage previously supported Crew Dragon’s first demonstration mission to the International Space Station, launch of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, and three Starlink missions this year.

Following stage separation, SpaceX landed Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. This was the 6th landing for this Falcon 9 first stage, teh 62nd successful recovery of a Falcon 9 first stage and the 32nd landing on this particular droneship.

The Starlink satellites deployed approximately 1 hour and 3 minutes after liftoff.

As this network is still in its early stages, the Starlink team continues to test the system, collecting latency data and performing speed tests of the service. The team also recently installed Starlinks on the Administrative Center building and about 20 private homes on the Hoh Tribe Reservation, located in a remote area of western Washington State where internet access is limited or completely unavailable. Learn more about the Hoh Tribe’s experience at this direct infolink…

RBC Signals has announced Aurora Propulsion Technologies has engaged the company for satellite communication services — the agreement gives Aurora Propulsion Technologies access to the RBC Signals global ground station network in support of its impending AuroraSat-1 mission.

Aurora Propulsion Technologies specializes in creating scalable solutions and services for the small spacecraft movement and lifecycle control. The company’s AuroraSat-1 mission is a cubesat demonstration mission and co-development project with SatRevolution which will provide proof of concept for attitude and orientation control. In addition, the satellite will also demonstrate Aurora Propulsion Technologies’ Plasma Brake technology for satellite de-orbiting. The satellite is scheduled to launch in December 2020 onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Executive Comments

“RBC Signals is proud to provide space communications support to Aurora Propulsion Technologies for their upcoming AuroraSat-1 mission,” said Christopher Richins, CEO of RBC Signals. “This is an exciting demonstration mission to support with our global network.”

“The RBC Signals offering is both a flexible and cost-effective means for us to easily communicate with AuroraSat-1,” noted Perttu Yli-Opas, CTO with Aurora Propulsion Technologies. “We are happy to be able to rely on experts for these services so we can focus our attention on other key aspects of the mission.”

Arianespace has announced that new shared payload opportunities to LEO have been opened with the company’s Vega launcher’s Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS).

For the next launch opportunity – Vega Flight VV18, targeted for the first quarter of 2021 – five companies already have signed contracts for payload slots, thereby fully booking the capacity on this mission.

The initial SSMS launch with Vega – Flight VV16 – was performed last month, fully proving the viability of Arianespace’s latest capability for orbiting small satellites. This inaugural SSMS launch was supported by the European Space Agency and the European Union, deploying 50-plus satellites for 21 commercial and institutional customers.

With the SSMS’ successful introduction, Arianespace is now able to offer a regular launch service for small satellites (mass under 400 kg). Customers will benefit from the highly modular payload carrying systems available on the current Vega and the enhanced Vega C version, along with the re-ignition capability of the launchers’ AVUM upper stage, as well as the new small spacecraft preparation and integration facilities in Europe that complement existing installations at the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. Vega C maiden flight is schedule for mid-2021.

Opportunities in 2021 include:

Longer-term opportunities include an SSMS mission to dawn-dusk low Earth orbit, and one to low Earth equatorial orbit.

For Vega’s next SSMS launch, Flight VV18 will be a piggyback mission with a dispenser configuration based on one hexagonal module below the main payload interface. Its fully-booked capacity underscores how attractive this opportunity was to users and customers, including Spire and Nanoavionics through SAB Launch Services; Eutelsat and Myriota, through Tyvak; and the Norwegian Space Center with its Norsat-3 satellite, through SpaceFlight Laboratories.

With the goal of further benefiting the small satellite community, Arianespace today released the new SSMS User’s Manual for Vega C. On Vega C, the SSMS will offer even greater performance capabilities and is to broaden the array of solutions that Arianespace provides to small satellite operators. The SSMS User’s Manual is available for downloading from the Arianespace website at this direct infolink…

Small, versatile, and efficient, the light-lift Vega is part of Arianespace’s launcher family, operating from the Guiana Space Center alongside the heavyweight Ariane 5 and the medium-lift Soyuz. Vega is a European Space Agency program; Italy’s Avio, based in Colleferro, is Vega’s industrial prime contractor, as well as the design lead for the SSMS.