News

Synspective Inc. (Synspective) and Dynamic Map Platform Co., Ltd. (Dynamic Map Platform) have been selected by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism for the Small and Medium Enterprise Innovation Promotion Program.

With the Dynamic Map Platform, Synspective submitted a proposal entitled  “Improving road management efficiency by increasing the accuracy of location information using SAR data based on HD maps.” The committee selected our proposal under the “Development of technologies that contribute to the advancement of road management monitoring and observation using next-generation technologies” category, awarding the company a grant of up to 350 million yen for the eligible project.

This project leverages SAR satellite technologies and Synspective’s Land Displacement Monitoring (LDM) solution and aims to integrate these technologies with HD maps for autonomous driving, which provide high-precision 3D positioning data. The focus will be on studying how this data can be applied to enhance road infrastructure management.

During development, Synspective will use HD maps to achieve high positional accuracy of SAR data and develop data sets that will support road infrastructure monitoring and maintenance. A data linkage system and viewer will be created that are designed for road maintenance and management. This setup will facilitate the visualization of disaster conditions and enable data sharing through API integration with other systems to advance road infrastructure management.

Alba Orbital has closed a large, multi-launch contract with Hello Space to launch four ‘rubik’s-cube-sized’ satellites via SpaceX — these PocketQubes, will be used to enhance global connectivity through IoT, following the success of Hello Space’s previous demo satellite mission with Alba Orbital named ‘Istanbul‘ in 2023. 

Under this new contract, Alba Orbital will deploy four ‘3p’ PocketQubes, each measuring 5 x 5 x 15 cm, and weighing 250 grams each, into space using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in NET Q4 2024 and Q1 2025 on behalf of Hello Space. These satellites will orbit the Earth in SSO, contributing to Hello Space’s efforts to expand their commercial IoT network. 

Despite their small size, these smallsats offer a cost-effective and adaptable platform for various space-based applications. At 25 K euros per launch, these tiny satellites can be flown to space for less than the price of a new car. 

By working with Alba Orbital, Hello Space is leveraging the advantages of PocketQubes to enhance their satellite technology at a reasonable cost. These satellites will help bridge connectivity gaps and improve data transmission worldwide, enabling applications such as environmental monitoring, asset tracking, and communication network improvement through the Internet of Things.

Tom Walkinshaw, CEO of Alba Orbital, said, “We are thrilled to work alongside Hello Space again and to continue to help them achieve their orbital ambitions. PocketQubes offer unparalleled advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness, versatility, and scalability, making them an ideal platform for driving innovation in satellite technology.”

Muzaffer Duysal, CEO of Hello Space Systems, said, “From the initial consultation to the flawless execution during the Istanbul mission campaign, Alba Orbital showcased exceptional technical competence and efficiency. We are delighted to have chosen Alba Orbital as our launch service provider once again, and we look forward to embarking on these new and exciting missions together,” said Muzaffer Duysal, CEO of Hello Space Systems. 

Scotland’s Minster for Exports,Lord Offord, said, “This is more encouraging news for Scotland’s thriving space industry. Alba Orbital are leading the way in the production of miniature satellites and this agreement will see their technology being used in many more missions. It once again shows the demand around the globe that exists for the amazing products we make here in Scotland.”

Alba Orbital is the leading provider of PocketQube satellite launch services, having delivered 41 satellites to orbit to date with launch partners such as SpaceX and Rocket Lab. With a focus on accessibility and reliability, Alba Orbital empowers organisations worldwide to realize their space exploration goals.

Unseenlabs has closed a fundraising round of €85 million.

This new funding round brings together leading investors: Supernova Invest, ISALT via its Strategic Transition Fund, and UNEXO. All of Unseenlabs’ historical partners, including 360 Capital, OMNES, Bpifrance, Breizh Up managed by UI Investissement, and S2G Ventures, also reaffirm their support for this new phase.

The strategic allocation of funds will focus on:

• Significant expansion of observation capabilities, with the launch of multiple satellites
• Strengthening Unseenlabs’ international presence, particularly in the American and Asian markets, crucial for the maritime sector
• Consolidation of activity within private sector segments such as oil and gas, insurance, shipowners, economic intelligence, or offshore energy
• Innovation and deployment of new products and solutions, thereby reinforcing Unseenlabs’ position as a leader in RF maritime surveillance solutions

Next month, Unseenlabs will launch two new satellites, BRO-12 and BRO-13, aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 as part of the Transporter-10 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base (USA).

“Unseenlabs has accumulated a total funding of €120 million since its inception. This reflects our steady progress and the continued confidence of our investors. The year 2023 marked a turning point for Unseenlabs, consolidating the relevance of our business model and the attractiveness of our offering in the market. This funding will allow us to accelerate our growth, particularly by developing new solutions and strengthening our presence in the private sector. We are excited to continue this journey with our historical partners while welcoming new ones,” said Chief Executive Officer, Clément Galic.

“Unseenlabs stands out for its innovative approach and its ability to redefine the standards of space observation of radio frequencies. We are convinced of its potential to stay a major global player. The decisive factors of our investment lie in their disruptive technology and the value-addition of their data, crucial for both state maritime missions and private sector markets,” said Etienne Moreau, partner at Supernova Invest.

LeoLabs has appointed Tony Frazier as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). He will lead LeoLabs as the firm scales to become a critical mission partner for combined military space operations and next generation space safety systems.

Tony’s wealth of experience driving innovation at the intersection of commercial space and national security will help LeoLabs further accelerate its growth and solidify its position as an industry leader. Most recently, as the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Public Sector Earth Intelligence at Maxar Technologies, Tony led a $1 billion business that supported missions across the U.S. Government and more than 60 international customers. During his tenure at Maxar, GeoEye, and DigitalGlobe, Tony became a trusted mission partner, won billions of dollars in new contract awards, and incubated two new businesses that were scaled above $100 million.

Space is increasingly congested and contested. In 2020, there were approximately 2,500 operational satellites in LEO Forecasts indicate this number could exceed 12,000 by the end of 2024 and upwards of 70,000 by 2030. While much of this growth has been driven by the commercial sector, many nations are making strategic investments in space. For example, China has reported that it intends to build a constellation of 26,000 satellites. This exponential growth of activity in space has created a need for a new class of safety and security solutions.

LeoLabs experienced strong momentum over the past year. It was recently selected by the U.S. Space Force to participate in the Space Systems Command’s SDA TAP Lab Accelerator where it is demonstrating how its AI-powered solutions can be applied to Space Battle Management. Additionally, LeoLabs is supporting international allies as they establish their military space operations. The company was also selected to provide a commercial foundation for the U.S. Department of Commerce’s historic civil space traffic coordination system.

Dan Ceperley co-founded LeoLabs in 2016 while at SRI International. As CEO, Dan led the development of the company’s proprietary radar technology, completing its first radar site in 2017 and expanding the network globally to include 10 radars in under six years. Under his leadership, LeoLabs built the world’s largest commercially owned catalog of objects and activities in LEO and developed the fastest and most comprehensive data analytics platform for space operations. It has won multiple multi-million-dollar contracts and raised more than $120 million in venture capital funding.

“After my experience at Maxar, I was looking for a company bringing commercial innovation to a critical national security mission,” said Tony. “LeoLabs is delivering incredible capabilities in the emerging markets of space situational awareness and space domain awareness. LeoLabs was the first company to detect a secondary object released by a Russian satellite in November and persistently tracked China’s spaceplane for over 200 days between 2022 and 2023, detecting several maneuvers, deployments, and docking activities. At Maxar, we leveraged the unique capabilities of our constellation, advances in computing, and geospatial analytics expertise to become the industry leader in Earth Intelligence. LeoLabs has built the right capabilities at the right time to become a critical mission partner for U.S., allied, and commercial space operators. I’m excited to join LeoLabs as CEO to build on its market momentum and scale its growth.”

“One of my proudest accomplishments is to see the technology we developed at LeoLabs used to impact customer missions,” said Dan. “The number of satellites and space threats is growing at an unprecedented rate. Tony is going to take the great capabilities and customer relationships we pioneered and scale them to become an indispensable source of information for the global space industry. I’m thrilled to get back to my engineering roots and support him by delivering the technology that will power this transition. We have new sensor hardware in the works, new AI-powered analytics, software integrations, and cutting-edge R&D that will make 2024 an exciting year.”

“It is terrific to see how Dan and the LeoLabs team have taken a nascent technology developed at SRI under funding from the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Science Foundation and grown it from a prototype to a product lockstep with the growth of the commercial space business,” said LeoLabs Board Chairman Manish Kothari. “The Board and I are grateful for Dan’s contributions and are excited for what is to come under Tony’s leadership.”

Ascent Solar Technologies (Nasdaq: ASTI) has announced that the Company’s solar module products will fly on NASA’s upcoming Lightweight Integrated Solar Array and AnTenna (LISA-T) mission, scheduled for launch this summer.

The mission, led by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, will demonstrate the capability to deploy large-area arrays on lightweight, low-cost and small spacecraft.

LISA-T is the fourth mission in NASA’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator (PTD) series of missions evaluating novel, small spacecraft capabilities on orbit. Managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, these demonstration missions facilitate the direct infusion of new technologies into the agency’s future science and exploration missions.

LISA-T (PTD-4)’s solar arrays are lower mass and stowed volume, and produce three times more power than alternative PV solutions traded within the system envelope. PTD-4’s deployable solar arrays are designed to scale larger than the mission’s CubeSat form factor with options capable of generating kilowatts of power to small spacecraft.

Leading up to this spacecraft demonstration, Ascent’s PV products were previously evaluated on the International Space Station. Modules tested on NASA’s MISSE-X experiment validated the resilience of the company’s CIGS material in the space environment, both bare and encapsulated. Additional Ascent modules with lower-cost and lighter-weight laminates are being evaluated on the upcoming MISSE payload slated to fly on SpaceX’s 30th Commercial Resupply Mission to the space station scheduled for March.

“Selection for this upcoming space mission is the culmination of years of Ascent’s work with NASA to optimize the PV modules that enabled LISA-T’s ambitious spacecraft mass and power budgets to close,” said Paul Warley, CEO of Ascent Solar Technologies. “This mission will demonstrate that previously unachievable spacecraft requirements can in fact be met. It also provides a shining example of the benefits of public-private partnerships that leverage new and innovative commercial technologies, as NASA programs like MISSE & PTD lead the way for even more capable spacecraft for government and commercial space missions. The modules developed for LISA-T informed the design of Ascent’s Titan line of space products, facilitating further maximization of power generation to the extent that spacecraft can produce kilowatts per kilogram of array in the space environment with minimal degradation over the life of the mission.”

Warpspace has established a subsidiary — Warpspace Europe GmbH (Warpspace Europe) — in Frankfurt, Germany.

With this establishment, Warpspace now has three bases, including its headquarters in Japan and a branch office in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Warpspace Europe will function as a development center.

Warpspace is working with several European partners to manufacture the satellite bus that will initially make up WarpHub InterSat, an inter-satellite, optical communications, network service. Having an engineering team in Europe will further accelerate collaboration with each EU-based partner company.

Europe, like Japan, has a long history of R&D in optical inter-satellite communication technology through public-private partnerships, such as the collaboration in the past on the demonstration of Japan’s OICETS (Kirari). With this background, Warpspace Europe will also serve as a base for exploring collaboration with governments and companies in European countries.

Hiromitsu Azuma, CEO and Representative Director, said, “In recent years, new space development and business has been based on the importance of keeping abreast of international trends and developing business in a flexible and precise manner. Europe is home to many companies and institutions that are skilled in optical communication technology, as well as technology and human resources that have been cultivated in the course of playing an important role in international space development, not only in Japan but also in cooperation with the United States and NASA over the years. In order to realize our vision as early as possible and to be on par with the rest of the world, it is essential that we not only cherish the technologies that Japan has cultivated, but also integrate the technologies that have been honed in Europe and the United States, respectively. We will continue to communicate closely with our partners, as we do in Japan, to ensure that the activities of the three bases are smoothly linked, with the aim of establishing highly reliable technologies and services at the earliest possible time.”

Warpspace is developing “WarpHub InterSat”, the world’s first commercial optical near real-time communication network service for LEO satellites. Three relay satellites capable of optical communications will transmit data sent from other satellites to ground stations in an immediate and high-capacity manner. This service is expected to be available by 2025. In recent years, the number of satellites for Earth observation has been increasing exponentially. WarpHub InterSat will make it possible to acquire and use more Earth observation data in near real-time, thereby contributing to the realization of a sustainable global economy by speeding up disaster response and improving the efficiency of resource management.

Spire Global, Inc. (NYSE: SPIR) has been awarded two framework contracts by the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) with a maximum overall budget of €8.4 million.

Concurrent with the framework award, Spire received two specific awards that total multi-million euros under the framework contracts. Under the contracts, Spire will provide space-based automatic identification system (SAT-AIS) data services for ship tracking over a four-year period, including real-time, standard and high-density backup SAT-AIS. Spire has provided satellite AIS data to EMSA since 2020.

The data will be integrated into EMSA’s SAT-AIS services, which aims to improve global vessel traffic monitoring with a focus on areas like polar regions where terrestrial AIS network coverage is limited. EMSA’s SAT-AIS data services play a critical role in monitoring vessel traffic by acquiring data beyond the reach of terrestrial AIS network coverage to facilitate worldwide vessel monitoring. Spire’s data will play a key role in enhancing global vessel tracking and maritime domain awareness, supporting EMSA’s mission.

Spire’s data shared with EMSA will also benefit EU and European Free Trade Association Member States authorities, EU institutions and international operational entities collaborating with the agency.

“Ensuring accurate vessel monitoring is vital for maritime safety, security, and global environmental protection,” said John Lusk, general manager of maritime, Spire. “At Spire, we believe our commitment to high reliability and superior data quality sets us apart in the industry, and we are thrilled that our dedicated efforts will not only support EMSA’s vision but also play a significant role in advancing maritime safety within the EU and beyond.”