LeoStella, a smallsat design and manufacturing company, has inaugurated their production facilities in Tukwila, Washington.

The company is a joint venture between Thales Alenia Space, joint venture between Thales (67 percent) and Leonardo (33 percent), and Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries. Formed in March of 2018, LeoStella has been developing a state-of-the-art production facility to construct smallsats cost-effectively and at scale.

LeoStella manufacturing facility.

The first satellite produced by LeoStella will be an Earth Observation (EO) satellite for BlackSky’s constellation. The satellite is scheduled to be completed by the end of Q1 in 2019. The company is also contracted to manufacture the next 20 satellites in the BlackSky constellation.

When operating at capacity, LeoStella’s production facilities will enable the company to produce up to 30 satellites a year, ranging from EO and telecom satellites. Additionally, LeoStella has spent the last year selecting the firm’s suppliers and forming partnerships with key vendors.

Executive Comments

Chris Chautard, the LeoStella CEO, said that with the growing number of constellations, there is a large demand for efficient smallsat production and the company is uniquely positioned to address that demand. LeoStella is a unique blend of deep knowledge and expertise from Thales Alenia Space and innovation and agility from Spaceflight Industries. With the new facility, the company is equipped to design and manufacture smallsats efficiently.

Brian O’Toole, President of Spaceflight Industries and CEO of BlackSky, added that the firm is positioned to disrupt the smallsat industry. The company is critical to BlackSky’s success as all work to get this constellation on orbit quickly. Part of making space more accessible is lowering all of the associated costs, including the design and construction of the assets placed on orbit. LeoStella will make constellation production lean, nimble and affordable.

Viktoria Otero Del Val, EVP Strategy at Thales Alenia Space, noted that LeoStella is fully in line with Thales Alenia Space’s strategy to match the new needs for new space. The company will complement and leverage their undisputed experience of mass production for constellation with its success of Globalstar, O3B and more recently, Iridium NEXT, making Thales Alenia Space the worldwide leader for constellations.

NanoRacks successfully completed the company’s sixth CubeSat deployment mission from Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus (S.S. John Young) spacecraft, which departed the International Space Station (ISS) on February 8th, 2019, and performed a number of on-orbit activities, including another historic deployment.

Artistic rendition of the Cygnus spacecraft. Image is courtesy of Northrop Grumman.

Cygnus maneuvered to a higher-than-Space Station altitude (445 kilometers) where the NanoRacks External Cygnus Deployment mission released two of the three CubeSats on board into orbit — MySat-1 and the second CHEFSat satellite. The spacecraft then lowered to an altitude of 300 kilometers to deploy KickSat-2.

Work on the MySAT-1 satellite at Yahsat Space Lab in Masdar City, a collaboration between the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, part of Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital ATK) and Al Yahsat Satellite Communications Company. Photo is courtesy of Vidhyaa for The National infosite.

The deployment of MySat-1 marks an additional historic moment for NanoRacks, being the first payload that the company has launched and deployed from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). MySat-1 is a joint program from Yahsat, Khalifa University of Science and Technology and Northrop Grumman and is the first satellite built at the Yahsat Space Lab in Masdar City and among the first to be developed by local students.

Photo of the Sprite, a tiny (3.5 by 3.5 centimeter) single-board spacecraft that has a microcontroller, radio, and solar cells and is capable of carrying single-chip sensors, such as thermometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes, and accelerometers. To lower costs, Sprites are designed to be deployed hundreds at a time in LEO and to simultaneously communicate with a ground station receiver.

KickSat-2 is a collaborative CubeSat from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and Stanford University. KickSat-2 was selected for flight by NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) and was launched as the sole CubeSat in the Educational Launch of Nanosatellites-16 (ELaNa-16) mission complement, sponsored by the NASA Launch Services Program (LSP).

KickSat-2 was deployed well below the ISS altitude due to the satellite sub-deploying smaller “ChipSats,” a prototype representing a disruptive, new, space technology. These ChipSats, also known as “Sprites,” are tiny spacecraft that include power, sensors, and communication systems on a printed circuit board that measure 3.5 by 3.5 centimeters, with a thickness of just a few millimeters and a mass of only a few grams. The ChipSats are expected to be in orbit for a few days before burning up.

The NanoRacks External Cygnus Program is the first program to have leveraged a commercial resupply vehicle for use beyond the primary cargo delivery to Space Station, demonstrating the future possibilities for using cargo vehicles for the NanoRacks Space Outpost Program and other commercial space station activities. With successful completion of this mission, NanoRacks has deployed 35 satellites from the Cygnus into multiple orbits.

Executive Comments

The NanoRacks VP of Business Development and Strategy, Allen Herbert, said the company could not be more excited about all of the activity happening in the space industry in the UAE. NanoRacks has a number of groundbreaking programs in the works and the MySat-1 deployment is the perfect way to kick start NanoRacks activities in the region.

NanoRacks External Payloads Manager, Henry Martin, noted that this entire mission is a testament to the flight safety teams in-house at NanoRacks and at NASA’s Johnson Space Center as well as the flight operations team at Northrop Grumman. The company was able to shepherd some extremely challenging payloads through the NASA system on a timeline that met the needs of the firm’s customers. This required many teams working closely together and the company is proud to have yet another successful mission that demonstrates the extended use of cargo vehicles.

To date, NanoRacks has deployed 231 satellites into LEO.

Arianespace has completed a major preparation milestone for their next Soyuz launch with integration of the mission’s high-profile payload: the initial six spacecraft in OneWeb’s constellation, which will provide affordable high-speed internet access for users around the world.

One of the six OneWeb satellites for launch on Soyuz Flight VS21 is integrated on its payload dispenser during activity inside the Spaceport’s S3B payload preparation facility.
Photo is courtesy of Arianespace.

The spacecraft — produced by the OneWeb Satellites joint venture of OneWeb and Airbus — will be orbited on Arianespace’s first Soyuz mission of 2019 from the Spaceport in French Guiana. Designated Flight VS21, the event has a targeted liftoff of February 26. Integration of the six satellites on their multi-payload dispenser system — which will deploy them during the mission from atop Soyuz’ Fregat upper stage — was completed in the Spaceport’s S3B payload preparation facility.

Once placed in a near-polar orbit by Soyuz, the OneWeb spacecraft will operate at an altitude of 1,200 km., giving customers extremely low latency and providing communications access to the entire world with fiber-quality internet connectivity. OneWeb is building the world’s largest and highest throughput satellite system to connect everyone, everywhere – by land, air, sea with a vision to bridge the digital divide once and for all. To develop their constellation of 150 kg. satellites, OneWeb signed a contract with Arianespace in 2015 for 21 Soyuz launches.

Artistic rendition of the OneWeb constellation. Image is courtesy of the company.

The upcoming Flight VS21 will mark the 21st liftoff of Soyuz from French Guiana since this medium-lift launcher’s 2011 operational debut at the Spaceport. As Arianespace’s second of as many as 12 missions planned for 2019, Flight VS21 also will continue the momentum gained from the company’s year-opening launch: Flight VA247 with Ariane 5, which successfully delivered a pair of telecommunications relay platforms – Saudi Geostationary Satellite 1/Hellas Sat 4 (HS-4/SGS-1) and GSAT-31 – to geostationary orbit on February 5.

A startup that plans to use high-altitude balloons to deploy rockets has successfully fired a test launch, moving closer to their goal of helping end the backlog of smallsats that wait months or longer to “hitch” a ride on larger rockets.

Leo Aerospace LLC, a Purdue University-affiliated startup based in Los Angeles, launched its first “rockoon,” a high-power rocket from a reusable balloon platform, from the Mojave Desert in southern California in December. A video is available at this direct link…

The company aims to revolutionize access to space for those looking to launch smallsats that weigh up to 25 kilograms, or about 110 pounds. The company plans to be a “dedicated” launch for microsatellites, serving one customer at a time.

SpaceWorks Enterprises Inc. issued a report last year estimating that as many as 2,600 smallsats will be launched over the next five years. To accomplish this, more companies that can send the satellites into space are needed.

Large aerospace launch companies generally cater more to large satellite companies, leaving microsatellite companies to wait to see if there is any leftover space available and the smallsat operator must try to find rockets that will deploy the equipment somewhere in the vicinity of where they would like to be located. Even then, this process can require months to maneuver into place after already waiting for months for smallsat deployment.

With the test launch completed, the startup founders are now planning to move on to their next phase, which involves raising $8 million to fund the company for the next two years. They also are looking to add personnel, including a VP for business development and VP of engineering. They are looking for people experienced in the aerospace industry who can bring valuable aerospace know-how to the firm.

The team spent two months in Australia last summer taking part in Startmate, an accelerator program, and plans to conduct at least some of their launches Down Under. Leo Aerospace’s long-term business plan includes engaging in a number of launches from Australia as regulations and air traffic can allow companies to fly more frequently,.

The startup’s work aligns with Purdue’s Giant Leaps celebration, celebrating the university’s global advancements in space exploration as part of Purdue’s 150th anniversary. This is one of the four themes of the yearlong celebration’s Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues.

Leo Aerospace received their start at Purdue and received guidance from the Purdue Foundry, an entrepreneurship and commercialization accelerator in Discovery Park’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship. The rocket scientists developed their business plan and learned what they needed to do to move forward.

Leo Aerospace already has begun taking letters of intent from smallsat companies. Hepfer said the company doesn’t plan to start selling launches until it is ready to begin launches. Leo plans to begin doing suborbital launches next year and break the edge of space by 2021. Suborbital launches allow scientists to gather information about the atmosphere and other research data.

The goal is to be able to start launching microsatellites into orbit by 2022. Those microsatellites will be able to monitor the health of crops, to track global commodity supplies and to advance scientific exploration.

Executive Comments

Michael Hepfer, head of product development for Leo Aerospace and a senior in Purdue’s School of Industrial Engineering, said it was thrilling to see that first launch after all those months of hard work and planning. This launch confirmed early testing that using high-altitude balloons and rockets to send microsatellites into space will work. It’s like taking a bus compared to taking an Uber. He added the advantage Leo Aerospace will have over larger companies is that the firm’s clients will be the smallsat companies and they will be able to deploy to precise locations. Additionally, using the high-altitude balloon as a launch pad will save money because it will deploy the rocket from up to 11 miles into the atmosphere. At that altitude, there is 95 percent less atmosphere, meaning there is much less drag, which means Leo Aerospace can use smaller rockets and less fuel.
     Hepfer noted that the launch in December, which did not include a satellite deployment, provided Leo Aerospace with valuable data. He said the firm received great information about what happens to the balloon craft when the rocket is launching because it shakes, vibrates, and twists — next time a bigger rocket is launched, the company will know what changes need to be made beforehand. The big challenge was figuring out how to integrate a high-altitude balloon with the logistics of attaching a rocket to it and then launching it remotely,. A big part of that was automating a many of the systems as the balloon is going to be out of sight when the rocket is launched.

Dane Rudy, the company’s CEO and a graduate of Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering, added that the company believes it should be as easy to put a microsatellite into space as it is to ship a package across the country. There will be no more need for ridesharing or hitchhiking.

Spaceflight will launch two payloads on its first rideshare mission to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) — the mission is scheduled for no earlier than mid-February 2019 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launching from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

The primary payload on the mission is a telecommunications satellite for the South East Asia region. Built by SSL, a Maxar Technologies company that also procured the launch vehicle, Spaceflight will also manage the launch of the two secondary payloads, Israeli non-profit SpaceIL’s lunar lander, and the U.S. Air Force Research Lab’s (AFRL) experimental small satellite, S5.

File photo of Spaceflight’s SSO-A mission’s fairing. Image is courtesy of the company.

This will be Spaceflight’s first mission beyond LEO and the company’s first combined launch with SSL. In addition to securing capacity aboard the launch vehicle, Spaceflight is handling all the mission management and integration services for the lunar lander, called Beresheet (Hebrew for in the beginning), and AFRL’s spacecraft. This includes a number of services, from pre-launch design, assembly, and integration to the final analysis and testing of the architecture before the spacecraft are encapsulated into the rocket.

• The spacecraft are headed to two different orbits. Once the Falcon 9 reaches GTO, it will separate SpaceIL’s lunar lander with a custom separation system. Beresheet will orbit Earth, gradually increasing its apogee until it can maneuver to be captured by the Moon’s gravity. It will travel to the Moon’s surface under its own power, a voyage taking nearly two months.
• Following Beresheet’s deployment, the AFRL spacecraft, built by Blue Canyon Technologies, will remain attached to the telecommunications satellite as they continue their journey to Geostationary Orbit (GEO). Before the telecommunications satellite reaches its final GEO position, it will separate the S5 spacecraft which will then turn on and start its mission.
• SpaceIL’s four-legged lunar spacecraft, which was competing in the Google Lunar XPrize, will be the smallest spacecraft to land on the Moon, at only 1,322 pounds, or 600 kilograms. Once it has completed its mission, Beresheet will represent Israel’s first spacecraft and the world’s first privately funded spacecraft to reach the Moon. Its mission is to transmit photos and video of its new home and conduct scientific measurements. Upon the mission’s completion, it will remain as a lunar time capsule commemorating this historic accomplishment.

This mission marks Spaceflight’s inaugural launch of 2019 and the first mission following SSO-A, the company’s historic, dedicated Falcon 9 rideshare mission that launched 64 smallsats from 34 organizations from 17 countries in December of 2018. To date, the company has negotiated the launch of more than 200 satellites and has plans for approximately 10 missions in 2019 launching nearly 100 payloads.

Executive Comment

Curt Blake, the CEO of Spaceflight, said this is an important mission for Spaceflight as the firm’s expands and evolves customer offerings. The launches being pursued continue to get more sophisticated and demonstrate that Spaceflight’s expertise goes beyond identifying and scheduling launches. The company also offers valuable integration and deployment services that enable customers to reach space in a cost-effective manner and reach their desired orbit successfully. With this mission, Spaceflight is demonstrating that the Moon is within reach.

Techstars and Starburst have announced their joint effort to help entrepreneurs succeed in aerospace — the Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator, a new Los Angeles-based program, will focus on the next generation of space technology companies and related frontier technologies.

Matt Kozlov will be the MD of the program — he previously led the Cedars Sinai Accelerator Powered by Techstars in Los Angeles and has invested in more than 30 companies. Van Espahbodi, Co-Founder and MD of Starburst, will be advising Kozlov and the broader program, applying his experience of accelerating over 300 aerospace startups.

Building on Techstars success running more than 150 accelerator programs around the world with both government entities and Fortune 500 corporations, coupled with Starburst aerospace industry experience and expertise, this new mentorship-driven accelerator has formal sponsorship from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lockheed Martin, Maxar Technologies, SAIC, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and the U.S. Air Force, with support from The Aerospace Corporation.

With recent technological breakthroughs such as reusable rockets, 3D printing, advanced materials, and miniaturization of satellites (“smallsats”), as well as the introduction and adoption of new business models, the opportunities for entrepreneurs and corporations are unprecedented. New business models will be a focus for the accelerator, and the consortium will be looking to work with startups that have a use case for new space and related technologies in fields such as energy, communications, robotics, and autonomy. Breakthroughs in these industries contribute to why Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently estimated the space economy will be worth more than $3 trillion by 2045.

Applications for Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator are now open. The program, Techstars third accelerator program in California, will kick off in July. Startup companies in commercial space or that are developing related technologies are encouraged to apply. Startup companies looking to connect with program staff prior to applying or to get feedback on their companies are welcome to request Office Hours with Techstars staff.

Executive Comments

Mr. Kozlov said that the space industry is massively exciting, but also quite complex. The company is bringing together vital industry leaders, public and private, who will help entrepreneurs navigate the industry and provide unprecedented commercial support and mentorship. The firm will help founders achieve two years of commercial traction in three months. Given the pedigree of the committed sponsors, this program will quickly become a vital resource for entrepreneurs building frontier tech.

Mr. Espahbodi added that the list of incredible companies continues to grow. The broader aerospace industry has finally embraced the notion of ‘open innovation’ by partnering with entrepreneurs to co-develop products, with a compelling business plan to match. Starburst is excited to advise the program to ensure early-stage businesses have the appropriate tools to compete in this emerging marketplace.

www.techstars.com

About Starburst

Starburst is an innovation catalyst in the Aerospace industry. It is the first global Aerospace Accelerator, matching corporates with startups while providing strategic growth consulting for startups and corporations alike. With offices in Los Angeles, Paris, Montreal, Munich, San Francisco and Singapore, the team has built an ecosystem of key players across the Aerospace industry including over 4000+ related startups. Every year Starburst hosts numerous international and national events bringing together Aerospace innovators and puts innovation in the spotlight at international air shows.

www.starburst.aero

Phase Four announced late last month that Capella Space has purchased six Maxwell engines for initial phase of constellation deployment, with an option to purchase additional Maxwell systems.

Capella Space is well-respected for its Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology that is designed to detect sub-meter changes on the Earth’s surface and tapped Maxwell as the company’s preferred propulsion solution for the firm’s phased deployment of a constellation of 36 smallsats.

Phase Four’s Maxwell engine. Photo is courtesy of the company.

Introduced in November 2018, Phase Four’s Maxwell is the first turnkey RF thruster-based propulsion solution targeted at small satellite constellations and is gaining swift traction with commercial and government satellite manufacturers. Maxwell brings new smallsat constellations the performance and efficiency of legacy electric propulsion systems, while obviating the need for expensive components that have hampered high performance propulsion solutions for small satellites.

According to the company, their small satellites are designed and deployed in less time and at a fraction of the cost of traditional high-resolution SAR systems, representing a seismic shift in the development of remote-sensing infrastructure. Once on-orbit, the high frequency revisit rate of the Capella constellation will improve reliability and accessibility to timely planetary insights anywhere on the globe. With support from Maxwell’s propulsion system, Capella’s small satellites will detect change and draw insights from high value areas of interest for customers across an array of industries, including commodity trading, shipping and maritime security, agriculture and food security, and defense and global infrastructure integrity monitoring. Phase Four will begin shipping Maxwell in Q3 2019.

Additionally, Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Inc., a Terran Orbital corporation, has purchased multiple Maxwell thrusters for their expanding portfolio of end-to-end smallsat solutions. Tyvak selected Maxwell to validate their capability to fulfill multiple mission needs, including orbital adjustments and safe de-orbiting of satellites.

“The emergence and sheer number of small satellite constellations headed into space over the next few years marks a turning point for the space economy, as increased demand for more commercial missions drive significant ROI for the first time in history,” said Beau Jarvis, Phase Four CEO. “Maxwell was designed to be the engine that powers these missions into LEO and beyond in an economical and efficient manner for our customers and we believe our RF Thruster technology will be the long-term solution for satellite propulsion.”

Executive Comments

Christian Lenz, the VP of Engineering at Capella Space, said selecting Phase Four’s Maxwell as an engine for the company’s satellites enables higher performance at lower cost. In terms of ROI, delta-V performance, and plug-and-play integration, Maxwell checks the boxes for employing the best performing systems and space technology in our mission to make vital information about our planet more accessible and reliable. Capella Space is pleased to cement this partnership with Phase Four and look forward to putting their capabilities on-orbit with the firm’s launches later this year.

Beau Jarvis, Phase Four CEO, added that as the burgeoning demand for small satellite constellations increases on a commercial scale, propulsion technology that is performant, readily manufactured at scale and affordable is required. Demand for such high performing affordable propulsion solutions will only continue to increase. With efficiency and scalability at the forefront, Phase Four’s core thruster technology allows for future spacecraft to use less, further contributing to the sustainable in-space industry and delivering on the promise to provide a satellite propulsion engine that powers missions into LEO and beyond in an economical and efficient manner.

Orbex has publicly unveiled the company’s Prime rocket for the first time at the opening of the firm’s new headquarters and rocket design facility in Forres in the Scottish Highlands. 

The rocket is designed to deliver smallsats into Earth’s orbit — the rocket was unveiled at an opening ceremony attended by VIPs from the UK and European space community as well as local community stakeholders.

Artistic rendition of the Orbex rocket in flight. Image is courtesy of the company.

The completed engineering prototype of the Stage 2 rocket (the stage that will transit into orbital flight after launch) is made from a specially-formulated, lightweight, carbon fiber and aluminum composite and includes the world’s largest 3-D printed rocket engine.

Artistic rendition of the Orbex rocket engine in space. Image is courtesy of the company.

Orbex Prime is a completely re-thought and re-engineered two-stage rocket, designed by Orbex aerospace engineers with professional experience from organizations that include NASA, ESA and Ariane, as well as other commercial spaceflight companies.  According to the company, Prime launchers are as much as 30 percent lighter and 20 percent more efficient than any other vehicle in the small launcher category, packing more power per cubic liter than many heavy launchers. 

Seen for the first time, the 3-D printed rocket engine was uniquely manufactured in a single piece without joins in partnership with additive manufacturer SLM Solutions.  Given the extreme temperature and pressure fluctuations involved in space flight, this gives the engine an advantage over other rocket engines, which can suffer from weaknesses associated with joining and welding.  This is also the first commercial rocket engine designed to work with bio-propane, a clean-burning, renewable fuel source that cuts carbon emissions by 90 percent compared to fossil hydrocarbon fuels, supplied by Orbex’s new exclusive BioLPG fuel partner, Calor.

Orbex first came into the public eye in July of 2018, when the UK Space Agency announced that Orbex had been selected to launch from the proposed spaceport in Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands, as part of the main consortium.  At that time, the company announced that it had already won £30 million ($40 million) in private and public backing for the project, making it Europe’s best-funded private launch company, straight out of stealth mode.

The company revealed the identities of more customers that would be among the first to launch their satellites from the Sutherland spaceport.  On Orbex Prime’s maiden flight from Scotland in 2021, the rocket will carry an experimental payload from UK-based Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), the world’s leading manufacturer of smallsats.  This launch will represent an important first for the UK commercial space industry, demonstrating the UK’s end-to-end launch capability with a UK rocket launching a UK satellite from a UK spaceport.

Orbex also announced that Swiss-based Astrocast SA, has selected Orbex to launch multiple nanosatellites for the development of a planet-wide Internet of Things (IoT) network.  Astrocast’s satellite-based IoT network will eventually include 64 smallsats, spread across eight strata above the Earth to deliver IoT connectivity across the planet, including regions currently considered remote or inaccessible. One of the leading companies in the European space sector and strategic investor in Orbex, Elecnor Deimos, has also confirmed that it has contracted with Orbex for as many as 20 satellite launches.

The new Headquarters building at Forres is a 2,000 square meter facility and will combine a rocket design and integration facility, an operations center as well as executive offices.  It is expected that the facility will help to bring more than 130 jobs to the Scottish Highlands region, with an intense recruitment drive for the company already underway.

Executive Comments

Business Secretary Greg Clark said that the plans for a spaceport in Sutherland have already attracted significant investment, and Orbex’s rocket design facility will bring more than 100 new jobs to the Scottish Highlands region.  The space sector is a great British success story — new innovations, capabilities and expertise are driving significant growth, with the sector generating close to £15 billion in income each year.

Graham Turnock, Chief Executive, UK Space Agency, noted that Orbex’s new rocket design facility brings Britain one step closer to having its own domestic commercial launch capability and firmly positions the UK as Europe’s front-runner for those looking to Earth’s orbit and beyond for new opportunities. The new facility and future spaceport operations will help unlock vast economic and societal benefits not just in Scotland, but directly across the UK.

Chris Larmour, Orbex CEO, added that since the announcement in July 2018 that the company had been selected to launch from the Sutherland spaceport, Orbex has been on an incredible journey, largely behind-the scenes. We can now publicly reveal the company’s technical and commercial momentum.  Not only does the company have a full engineering prototype of the complete Stage 2 of the Prime rocket, but also a growing roster of customers hoping to be among the first to launch satellites from Scotland. There are only a handful of private launcher companies globally that have practical experience in the design and production of micro-launch vehicles, and even fewer that have combined those skills with sufficient funding and the commercial contracts to execute on their plans. Orbex is looking forward to the next steps in the company’s development from the firm’s new home in Scotland.

The novel Sun-Synchronous Orbit-A mission (SSO-A) successfully completed on December 3 last year relied significantly on error-free operation of an extensive suite of avionics supplied by Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation.

Conceived in 2015 by Spaceflight, SSO-A was the first fully dedicated rideshare mission, where 64 smallsats were integrated onto a single large launch vehicle (a SpaceX Falcon 9) via a modular stack of support structure, launched into LEO and then separately deployed from the support structure to become independent Earth-orbiting satellites.  This mission set a new U.S. record for the most satellites launched by a single launch vehicle:  64.

Once reaching orbit, avionics on the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage initiated six deployment events:  separation of a large module called the Upper Free-Flyer (UFF), separation of a smaller module called the Lower Free-Flyer (LFF) and the release of four smallsats that were attached to a structural module that remained with the second stage. Twenty smallsats were from the UFF and and 40 from the LFF.  Ecliptic’s avionics interfaced with five different separation system designs from four different vendors.

The UFF and LFF were both outfitted with a redundant suite of Ecliptic-supplied control avionics, battery packs, radio transmitters and wire harnesses.  Separation from the Falcon 9 activated these systems, and for several more hours a combined 60 spacecraft release events were commanded by the electronics, following complex, thoroughly tested event sequences stored in non-volatile memory.  Confirmation signals verifying spacecraft release and other important engineering telemetry were also captured and relayed to various tracking stations around the globe.

Artistic rendition of Spaceflight’s SSO-A mission.

Ecliptic began its contract with Spaceflight more than two years before the launch, stepping through requirements-definition and design phases, build-up of development model test versions of the system, and finally build-up and environmental testing of the flight units.  As part of the overall effort, Ecliptic opened a new wiring harness lab and for over a year and a half designed, fabricated and tested over two miles of test and flight harnesses.

Executive Comments

Spaceflight’s SSO-A Mission Director, Jeff Roberts, noted that Ecliptic’s products and services were the key to mission success and he commended the firm for their support of the mission.

Ecliptic’s COO and project manager for this project, Riki Munakata, said that, programmatically and technically, this was a highly challenging effort. The hardware, software and harnessing designs had to be flexible enough to deal with many changes in the SSO-A payload manifest during the course of the contract, and the company knew that the overall operation ultimately had to be flawless for the mission to succeed 100 percent.

RocketCam™ is a trademark of Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation.

Link Microtek, a manufacturer of microwave and RF subsystems and components, has designed and produced a spaceflight-qualified microwave rotary joint and associated waveguide components as part of a Ka-band antenna pointing mechanism (APM) being developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd., which is an independent company within Airbus.

Destined for use on LEO satellites, the Ka-band APM will enable the maximum amount of high-data-rate information, such as high-resolution images or video, to be transmitted to a ground station as the satellite completes its rapid traverse of the sky. Within the APM, the rotary joint performs the critical function of feeding the RF carrier signal from the static side of the antenna to the rotating side.

This photo shows one of the Link Microtek rotary joints being inserted into SSTL’s Ka-band antenna pointing mechanism.

SSTL’s APM design includes two Link Microtek rotary joints z— one for azimuth and one for elevation — as well as interconnecting waveguides, which are made from aluminum to minimize weight and are crucial to the overall RF performance of the system. Each rotary joint is of single-channel, non-contacting design covering the frequency band 25.5 to 27.0 GHz. Also made from aluminum, the rotary joints feature a WR34 waveguide interface on both ends and a bespoke flange design. The measured RF performance has a low maximum insertion loss of 0.29dB, a maximum insertion loss WOW of 0.12, maximum VSWR of 1.28:1 and maximum VSWR WOW of 0.13.

The development of the new Ka-band APM will significantly enhance SSTL’s data downlink capability, enabling it to support a data throughput of up to 1Gbps for a variety of high-resolution imaging applications.

Executive Comment

Link Microtek’s Managing Director, Steve Cranstone, said that as the rotary joint and waveguide components are for use in spaceflight, they had to combine very low loss performance, low weight and long life, while at the same time being able to withstand the extreme physical demands of vacuum, vibration and temperature variation. This made the design and manufacture of these parts quite challenging. Although ensuring that these intricate parts could cope with the hostile conditions of spaceflight was an enormous challenge, this was one that the company’s in-house team of engineers completed successfully, drawing on their decades of experience in this field to produce components of extraordinary robustness and stability. The rotary joint, for example, showed no significant degradation of performance even after an accelerated life test of nearly 700,000 revolutions.

Simon McLaren, Mechanisms Team Leader at SSTL, added the company is pleased with the performance of the non-contacting Ka-band rotary joint and waveguide RF feed network developed by Link Microtek for use in Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.’s evolving antenna pointing mechanisms product range, to increase downlink capacity over existing technologies.