News

The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has launched its first satellite — DEWA-SAT1 — and Wyld Networks has partnered with DEWA R&D Centre and Infra X, the telecoms arm of Digital DEWA, to develop IoT terminals to support the new satellite IoT network — Wyld is responsible for delivering the satellite IoT terminals for the network.

With the launch of its DEWA-SAT 1 smallsat earlier this year, DEWA will become the world’s first utility company to use nanosatellites to improve maintenance and planning of electricity and water networks. Wyld has delivered the first test satellite terminals ahead of the launch of the service.

DEWA’s Space-D space program will be using satellites and ground station infrastructure to monitor electricity and water networks. For example, it will use thermal imaging to detect thermal fingerprints in high voltage transmission lines, substations, buildings and solar power stations.

“We are thrilled to part of the DEWA space program. It is an ambitious and far-reaching project to use satellites to provide connectivity anywhere in the world to enhance the operations of water and electricity networks. This is a truly innovative initiative to revolutionise the global utilities sector,” said Alastair Williamson, CEO of Wyld Networks.

Wyld Networks develops and sells innovative wireless technology solutions that enable affordable connectivity anywhere in the world, addressing the problems caused by the lack of global mobile network coverage. The solutions are mainly targeted delivering wireless connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT) and people.

On Wednesday, May 18, at 6:59 a.m. ET, SpaceX launched 53 Starlink satellites to compliment their continually growing smallsat constellation from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This was the fifth flight for the Falcon 9 first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Arabsat-6A, STP-2, COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2, and now two Starlink missions.

SI Imaging Services (SIIS) will operate a joint booth with GHGSat at the World Gas Congress 2022 (WGC) held at EXCO in Daegu, South Korea, from the 23rd of May for five days.

The World Gas Conference is the world’s largest, international, gas conference that has continued its 90-year history and tradition and will be held in Daegu for the first time in Korea. Governments, NGOs, industry officials, environmental experts, and technical experts from each country exchange their knowledge, technology, and information on gas and discuss the development and energy agenda of the global gas industry. Above all, carbon neutrality is expected to be the biggest issue due to the severe climate crisis.

SIIS has supplied VHR satellite imagery of KOMPSAT series 2, 3, 3A, and 5 worldwide. As the need for ESG management (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) has emerged rapidly in recent years, it entered into an official partnership with GHGSat in June of last year, and it started to supply remote, methane, monitoring services using satellites to Korea and East Asia.

GHGSat’s satellites provide 100 times higher spatial resolution than existing greenhouse gas observation satellites and is differentiated for its technology in pinpointing the exact source of methane emissions at the facility level in the Oil and Gas sector.

An official from SIIS said, “This year, we have decided to run a joint booth with GHGSat at the World Gas Conference to inform the industry of the high-resolution methane monitoring satellites. We will establish a foothold to help companies and institutions realize their ESG management goals. It will become more and more important for organizations and companies worldwide to actively respond to environmental issues, and carbon neutrality is the most important task. Gaining the upper hand in carbon diplomacy is expected to bring appropriate development and a sustainable future to our entire industry. ”

SIIS provides satellite imagery of Korean Multi-Purpose Satellite (KOMPSAT) 2, 3, 3A, and 5. SIIS contributes to the remote sensing and earth observation industries with very-high-resolution optical images and SAR images through about 160 resellers worldwide. Satellite imagery is used in remote sensing fields such as mapping, agriculture, and disaster observation. www.si-imaging.com  GHGSat: GHGSAT is a leader in high-resolution greenhouse gas monitoring from space, providing actionable emission data to businesses, governments, and regulators worldwide. With proprietary remote-sensing capabilities and patented technology, GHGSat can monitor individual facilities, offering greater data accuracy, and facilitating timely strategic decision-making insights.

The development of South Australia’s first state satellite has taken a giant leap toward delivering tangible data solutions, following the successful completion of the Critical Design Review (CDR).

This step marks a major milestone for the South Australian Space Services Mission satellite, Kanyini, with the project team finalizing the design of the 6U spacecraft with integrated payloads and initiating the start of its manufacture and test phase.

One research project conducted through the SmartSat CRC has already demonstrated reliable, cost-effective monitoring of the Department of Environment’s extensive network of groundwater bores through IoT and smallsat telecommunications will be using the technology onboard Kanyini.

The research project, conducted by FrontierSI, Myriota, Uni SA (University of South Australia), NGIS Australia and Department for Environment and Water, has resulted in the development of an end-to-end solution for transmitting and aggregating automatically collected information from bores across rural and regional South Australia, with a focus on environmental water monitoring.

With much of Australia’s groundwater being a main source of drinking water for many regional townships and heavily used by agriculture, mining and the energy sectors, this project has the potential to significantly optimize groundwater optimization, reduce staff field time and increase the availability of groundwater information.

Founder and CEO of Inovor Technologies, the company responsible for Kanyini’s design and build, Dr. Matthew Tetlow, said the success of the CDR gave the green light for the project’s next phase. “The successful CDR – this confidence in the design of the spacecraft – provides a boost as we head towards the next big milestone which is to test and integrate the payloads into the satellite which will provide services to the South Australia government. The process of building a spacecraft with our project partners is dynamic – the mission has a very complex payload suite which has given our team the chance to be innovative and creative in developing solutions to meet the mission requirements. We’ve all risen to the challenge – kudos to everyone involved.”

FrontierSI Deputy CEO, Phillip Delaney, reinforced the project’s success and praised the collaboration between the South Australian Government and SmartSat CRC and said, “We have been working closely with Myriota, UniSA, NGIS Australia, and the Department for Environment and Water over the past two years to demonstrate the transformative use of Internet-of-Things and nanosatellite communications to improve groundwater bore monitoring and management in the harsh environment of remote Australia. This project has created a wealth of information on groundwater, transforming once per year updates on groundwater into data points multiple times per day. This will be critical to underpinning decision making, reactive to events, and understanding the impacts of developments on the whole groundwater network. Importantly, as many of these sites are in hard, remote environments, there are substantial safely benefits gained by reducing the number of times these sites need to be visited. All of these benefits would not be possible without this transformation space enabled communications technology. Congratulations to the South Australian government, the SIGWater project team, and SmartSat CRC for their collaboration and belief in this innovative body of work.”

SmartSat CRC Chief Executive Officer, Andy Koronios, said the state’s investment in Kanyini is providing researchers with a vehicle to develop real-world technology based on their research to the benefit of a range of stakeholder and he said, “We are dedicated to developing satellite IoT connectivity technologies that help solve some of the biggest challenges facing Australian industries, and that includes water security for our environment, community and the economy. With over a third of the world’s biggest groundwater systems already in distress, this project will put Australia in pole position to be a global leader in groundwater management and apply the solution locally and abroad. It is fantastic to know that we can deliver this technology to space aboard a sovereign satellite such as Kanyini. The data captured by this satellite will help progress valuable research into satellite technology. We are continuing to look at new projects that will provide services for the South Australian Government.”

As IoT lead for the mission, Myriota co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Dr. David Haley added that the data collected would have enormous benefits for users here on Earth he noted, “The success of the Kanyini Critical Design Review marks the beginning of a new phase of the program where the Myriota and Inovor teams will proceed with assembly, integration and testing of the spacecraft and its two payloads. The Internet of Things payload will add to the Myriota Network, collecting data from devices and sensors on the Earth’s surface, working together with hyperspectral imaging collected from the earth observation payload to support a wide array of applications including aiding farmers in monitoring water levels so they can more accurately predict future crop yields and supporting emergency services personnel to monitor, manage and mitigate emergencies, such as bushfires.”

Space Micro Inc., powered by Voyager Space, recently delivered a total of seven (7), flight-level, Single Board Computers (SBCs) to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of Pasadena, California, for the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE).

Slated for a 2024-2025 launch, SunRISE will collect data obtained by a smallsat array to help scientists better understand how the Sun generates and releases solar particle storms into space and how these storms influence the interplanetary environment. Space Micro’s SBCs contribute to the mission by performing on-board data processing.

According to JPL, SunRISE relies on six solar-powered cubesats – each about the size of a toaster oven – to simultaneously observe radio images of low-frequency emission from solar activity and share them via NASA’s Deep Space Network. The constellation of cubesats will fly within 6 miles (10 kilometers) of each other, above Earth’s atmosphere, which otherwise blocks the radio signals SunRISE will observe. Together, the six cubesats will create 3D maps to pinpoint where giant particle bursts originate on the Sun and how they evolve as they expand outward into space. This, in turn, will help determine what initiates and accelerates these giant jets of radiation. The six individual spacecraft will also work together to map, for the first time, the pattern of magnetic field lines reaching from the Sun out into interplanetary space.

Space Micro’s full suite of computing platforms also includes the Proton400K quad-core SBC and the octal-core Proton600K Space VPX SBC, which support a wide range of applications. The company has delivered space processors for cislunar, GEO, HEO, and LEO applications for multiple U.S and international civil and national security space programs, with some processors continuing to operate on-orbit more than a decade after launch.

“Space Micro is honored to be part of the SunRISE team and contribute technology to this innovative mission. This mission expands upon our collaboration with JPL, being the third JPL mission that our team has supported. JPL continues to dare mighty things and we look forward to seeing what the team develops next,” said Space Micro Executive Chair, David J. Strobel.

“Space Micro continues to push the envelope of what is possible, and we’re proud of the impact the company is making not only on SunRISE – but within widespread space research and exploration,” said Dylan Taylor, CEO and Chairman, Voyager Space. “Voyager is built to accelerate the success of our technologies and capabilities, and Space Micro continues to demonstrate this vision.”

Space Micro Inc., powered by Voyager Space and based in San Diego, California, is an engineering-driven supplier of affordable, high-performance, radiation-hardened communications, electro-optics, and digital systems for use in commercial, civil, and military space applications around the world. Space Micro solutions include Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TT&C) transmitters, mission data transmitters, space cameras, star trackers, image processors, Command & Data Handling (C&DH) systems and laser communications systems.

Voyager Space is a space technology company dedicated to building a better future for humanity in space and on Earth. With nearly 20 years of spaceflight heritage and over 1500 successful missions as of April 2022, Voyager delivers space station infrastructure and services and technology solutions to commercial users, civil and national security government agencies, academic and research institutions, and more, with the goal to accelerate a sustainable space economy.

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6503) has developed an on-orbit, additive-manufacturing technology that uses photosensitive resin and solar ultraviolet light for the 3D printing of satellite antennas in the vacuum of outer space.

The novel technology makes use of a newly developed liquid resin that was custom formulated for stability in vacuum. The resin enables structures to be fabricated in space using a low-power process that uses the sun’s ultraviolet rays for photopolymerization.

The technology specifically addresses the challenge of equipping small, inexpensive spacecraft buses with large structures, such as high-gain antenna reflectors, and enables on- orbit fabrication of structures that greatly exceed the dimensions of launch vehicle fairings. Resin-based, on-orbit manufacturing is expected to enable spacecraft structures to be made thinner and lighter than conventional designs, which must survive the stresses of launch and orbital insertion, thereby reducing both total satellite weight and launch costs.

Spacecraft antenna designs are challenging, due to their conflicting requirements for high gain, wide bandwidth and low weight. High gain and wide bandwidth necessarily require a large aperture, but economical orbital deployment conventionally dictates that designs be lightweight and small enough to fit or fold inside a launch vehicle or satellite deployment mechanism. Mitsubishi Electric’s innovative approach—resin-based on-orbit manufacturing—efficiently realizes high-gain, wide-bandwidth, large-aperture antennas deployed from a lightweight, vibration-resistant launch package. By developing a 3D printer that extrudes a custom ultraviolet-curable resin formulated for vacuum, resin-based low-power freeform (without requiring auxiliary support structures) additive-manufacturing in space has now become possible.

Features
1) 3D printer for the freeform fabrication of antennas in vacuum
— The 3D printer shares the antenna’s struts and angle-adjustment motors.
— Antenna size is not limited by the size of the fairing of the launch vehicle or the size of the satellite bus.
— On-orbit manufacturing eliminates the need for an antenna structure that can withstand vibrations and shocks during launch, which is required for conventional antenn areflectors, making it possible to reduce the weight and thickness of antenna reflectors, thereby contributing to the reduction of satellite weight and launch costs.
— Assuming the use of a 3U cubessat (100 x 100 x 300 mm) specification, an antenna reflector with a diameter of 165 mm, which is larger than the size of the cubesat bus, was fabricated in air and a gain of 23.5 dB was confirmed in the Ku-band (13.5 GHz).

2) World’s first** (as of May 17, 2022, according to the company’s research) photosensitive resin with stability suitable for extruding and curing in vacuum
— Commercial photosensitive resins have low molecular weight, high vapor pressure, and are not suitable for vacuum applications, where they boil and prematurely polymerize. The newly developed ultraviolet-curing resin uses a high-molecular-weight, low-vapor-pressure oligomer base blended with a vacuum stable plasticizer based on a non-volatile, polyphenyl ether to achieve a viscosity suitable for extrusion in vacuum.
— As most polymerization inhibitors require atmospheric oxygen as a co-factor to prevent premature polymerization and do not function in vacuum, the new resin formulation uses inhibitors that do not depend on the presence of oxygen and have near-zero volatility.
— When exposed to ultraviolet light, the resin polymerizes by crosslinking into a solid that is heat-resistant to at least 400°C, which is beyond the maximum temperature experienced on-orbit.
— The use of sunlight for polymerization and curing eliminates the need for a separate ultraviolet light source, enabling manufacturing with low power consumption.

Future Developments
Mitsubishi Electric’s resin-based, on-orbit manufacturing enables smallsats to achieve large-satellite capabilities, which reduces launch costs and allows for satellite technology to be used more than ever in applications such as communication and Earth Observation (EO). These extended capabilities are expected to enable more timely provision of satellite imagery and observation data that meet the varied needs of individuals and organizations.

Gilmour Space Technologies has unveiled a new 3D printed liquid rocket engine that will power the third stage of the firm’s Eris rocket to orbit.

The company today shared a video of a successful, 190-second, Mission Duty Cycle (or mission duration) test fire of its new, regeneratively-cooled, liquid rocket engine. (Watch the test fire via this direct link…)

Eris is a three-stage rocket being developed by Gilmour Space for launching smallsats into LEO. Its maiden launch is targeted to be at the end of this year from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in north Queensland, pending regulatory and other approvals.

“The first and second stages of Eris will be powered by Sirius, our large hybrid rocket engine which is undergoing qualification tests,” said Gilmour Space CEO, Adam Gilmour. “The third stage of Eris will be powered by this new 3D printed liquid rocket engine, called Phoenix, which we developed to give us the extra performance needed to deliver substantially more payload to orbit. With this key test, we’re proud to say that Gilmour Space has demonstrated sovereign capability in not one but two rocket systems.”

Rocket Lab (Nasdaq: RKLB) has revealed that the CAPSTONE spacecraft has arrived at Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand, in preparation for launch to lunar orbit.

With the spacecraft now at the launch site, Rocket Lab will begin payload integration with the Electron rocket and Photon spacecraft bus ahead of the launch window opening on May 31st.

Designed and built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, a Terran Orbital Corporation, and owned and operated by Advanced Space, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) cubesat will be the first spacecraft to test the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) around the Moon. Researchers expect this orbit to be a gravitational sweet spot in space – where the pull of gravity from Earth and the Moon interact to allow for a nearly-stable orbit – allowing physics to do most of the work of keeping a spacecraft in orbit around the Moon.

NASA has big plans for this unique type of orbit. The agency hopes to park bigger spacecraft – including the lunar-orbiting space station Gateway – in an NRHO around the Moon, providing astronauts with a base from which to descend to the lunar surface as part of the Artemis program.

CAPSTONE will be launched to an initial LEO by Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle and then placed on a ballistic lunar transfer by Rocket Lab’s Lunar Photon spacecraft bus. Unlike the Apollo lunar missions of the 1960s and 70s, which took a free return trajectory to the Moon, this fuel efficient, ballistic, lunar transfer makes it possible to deploy CAPSTONE to such a distant orbit using a small launch vehicle. Standing at just 59 feet tall, Electron is the smallest rocket to attempt a launch to the Moon.

Approximately ten minutes after lift-off on Electron, Rocket Lab’s Lunar Photon spacecraft bus, with CAPSTONE attached, will separate from the rocket and carry out a series of orbit raising maneuvers, stretching its orbit into a prominent ellipse around Earth. About six days after launch, a final burn from Photon’s 3D printed HyperCurie engine will accelerate Photon to 24,500 miles per hour, enabling it to escape low-Earth orbit and set CAPSTONE on a course for the Moon. Within 20 minutes of the final burn, Photon will release CAPSTONE into space for the first leg of the cubesat’s solo flight.

CAPSTONE’s journey to NRHO is expected to take around four months from this point. Once successfully inserted into the orbit, CAPSTONE is expected to remain there for at least six months, allowing NASA to study the orbit dynamics.

Rocket Lab has carried out 26 Electron launches since 2017, but the CAPSTONE mission will be Rocket Lab’s first launch beyond low Earth orbit. Rocket Lab also operates two Photon spacecraft in LEO, but the CAPSTONE mission is the first to employ the high energy variant of the Photon spacecraft bus, powered by the HyperCurie engine, designed to support lunar and interplanetary missions. CAPSTONE is the first in a series of interplanetary missions for Photon, including the ESCAPADE mission to Mars in 2024 and Rocket Lab’s private mission to Venus in 2023.

“CAPSTONE’s arrival at Launch Complex 1 marks a major milestone in this historic mission. We’re excited to move into the final integration and test phase ahead of launch day,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “This is our most ambitious Photon mission yet and a significant step toward providing scientific missions with dedicated and affordable access to interplanetary orbits. Less than four years after our first Electron mission for NASA, it’s fantastic to be working with the agency and its partners again to go beyond low Earth orbit and pave the way for humanity’s return to the Moon.”