Artistic rendition of the AFRL’s Eagle satellite. Image is courtesy of Northrop Grumman.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has started the first-ever inspection mission to support real-time, on-orbit, spacecraft anomaly resolution operations.
 
This effort will be a rendezvous between the experimental Mycroft satellite and a second experimental AFRL satellite called the Small Satellite Space Surveillance System, or S5. The S5, launched on February 22, 2019, is a smallsat designed to test affordable smallsat Space Situational Awareness (SSA) constellation technologies.
 
AFRL has experienced communication challenges with the S5 satellite and has had no communication with S5 since March 2019. Operators confirm that the spacecraft is alive and maintaining solar power by tracking the sun, but without communications, S5 cannot perform its experiments.

​A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the AFSPC-11 mission for the U.S. Air Force lifts off from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral AFS, Florida, on April 14, 2018. The launch carried the experimental smallsat Mycroft into orbit. Photo is courtesy of ULA.

Mycroft is an AFRL-developed smallsat that was launched with the EAGLE (ESPA Augmented Geostationary Laboratory Experiment) satellite on April 14, 2018. Mycroft separated from EAGLE and drifted about 35 kilometers away before transiting carefully back to within a few kilometers of EAGLE. It has performed SSA and satellite inspection experiments over the past 18 months.

The Mycroft experiment is aimed at improving autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations, or RPO, SSA, satellite inspection and characterization, and autonomous navigation technologies.
 

Mycroft satellite operators will initiate a series of maneuvers to rendezvous with S5 near 6 degrees East longitude at GEO to support anomaly resolution efforts. EAGLE will also maneuver into the vicinity of the RPO to observe the inspection from a safe distance.

Mycroft will inspect the S5 satellite and provide operators with verification of the fully-deployed solar array and of the sun pointing orientation. Mycroft will then examine the exterior of the S5 spacecraft to search for damaged components such as the solar array and antennas.
 
The Mycroft-S5 RPO will occur in stages over a period of several weeks, demonstrating the utility of inspection and characterization capabilities in a real-world satellite recovery. AFRL is planning to transition operations to Air Force Space Command later this year.

Article source: Los Alamos Daily Post
 

Small spacecraft manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) has been selected by NASA’s Ames Research Center to support a technology demonstration mission called Starling, under NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology Program.

Under this contract agreement, BCT will design, manufacture and provide engineering support during commissioning for 4 flight-qualified 6U cubesats.

The goal of the Starling mission will be to prove out the capability of affordable, distributed spacecraft missions, or large aggregations called “swarms,” in LEO. The starling bird is famous for flying in a swarm formation.

Artistic rendition of Blue Canyon’s microsat smallsat.

Image is courtesy of the company.

As small spacecraft increase in accuracy and capability, flight-qualifying swarm technology benefits the industry as a whole by giving access to low cost, highly capable platforms that can operate from the near-Earth to the deep space environments.

Starling is expected to launch in mid-2021.

Blue Canyon’s diverse spacecraft platform has the proven capability to enable a broad range of missions and technological advances for the New Space economy, further reducing the barriers of space entry.

BCT is currently building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic missions. The company has doubled in size over the past 12 months and plans to open its new 80,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in 2020.

Nick Monahan, Systems Engineer at Blue Canyon Technologies, said that, ultimately, swarm technology will enable a new way to explore the vastness of space as well as the complexity of the solar system. BCT is honored to contribute to making the technology possible.

Rocket Lab has unveiled plans to support extended range missions to medium, geostationary and lunar orbits with the company’s Photon satellite platform.

Less than two years after opening access to LEO for smallsats with the Electron launch vehicle, Rocket Lab is now bringing medium, geostationary, and lunar orbits within reach for small satellites. Rocket Lab will combine their Electron launch vehicle, Photon small spacecraft platform and a dedicated bulk maneuver stage to accomplish extended-range missions and deliver small spacecraft to lunar flyby, Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), L1/L2 points, or Lunar orbit. These capabilities can then be expanded to deliver even larger payloads throughout cis-lunar space, including as high as GEO.

The experience gained through multiple orbital Electron launches, and iterative performance improvements to Photon’s Curie propulsion system, enables Rocket Lab to undertake extended range missions with proven technology and significant experience. All systems for extended missions are derived from high-heritage flight-proven equipment, including the Curie engine, Kick Stage, Electron composite tanks, and demonstrated expertise in launch and spacecraft guidance, navigation and control.

Rocket Lab’s most recent mission, ‘As The Crow Flies,’ was the company’s 9th Electron launch and it saw Electron’s Kick Stage deploy a payload to an altitude of more than 1,000 km. The mission successfully demonstrated recent upgrades to the 3D-printed Curie propulsion system for Photon, including the move to a bi-propellant design for greatly improved performance.

Photon, in particular, was designed for use in both LEO and interplanetary missions, with radiation-tolerant avionics, deep space-capable communications and navigation technology, and high-performance space-storable propulsion capable of multiple restarts on orbit. The combination of Photon and Electron has been designed as a complete solution for responsive LEO, MEO and cis-lunar missions, as early as Q4 2020.

Rocket Lab Founder and Chief Executive, Peter Beck, said there is increasing international interest in lunar and beyond LEO exploration from government and private sectors, noting that small satellites will play a crucial role in science and exploration, as well as providing communications and navigation infrastructure to support returning humans to the Moon – they play a vital role as pathfinders to retire risk and lay down infrastructure for future missions. Just like LEO small spacecraft, many potential exploration instruments and full satellites are on shelves waiting for launch to deeper space. In the same way the company opened access to LEO for smallsats, Rocket Lab is poised to become the dedicated ride to the Moon and beyond for small satellites.

Kleos Space S.A (ASX:KSS, Frankfurt:KS1) has received confirmation that their Kleos Scouting Mission¹ will launch via a PSLV rocket from Chennai, India, in December of 2019.

Kleos’ cluster of four satellites are confirmed as mission-ready for PSLV integration. Technical efforts have ensured the satellites will function with the dispensers for the PSLV rocket. The satellites have passed a deployer fit check which confirms the satellites conform to the PSLV requirements.

Artistic rendition of a Kleos Space smallsat on-orbit.

Image is courtesy of the company.

The Scouting Mission satellites will launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre aboard PSLV C49 (a rideshare launch including satellites from other organizations, such as Spire Global) into a 37 degree inclination to deliver optimized revisit rates over crucial shipping regions that include the Strait of Hormuz, South China Sea and East and West African coasts as compared to the original SSO.

PSLV rocket on pad.

Photo is
courtesy of ISRO.

The four-week launch preparation schedule will commence in mid-November with shipping of high purity butane satellite fuel to the launch integration facility in Chennai. While launch preparations are underway, Kleos remains focused on securing additional Government and commercial pre-order contracts and is on track to achieve first revenues in Q1 2020.

The development of Kleos’ second cluster of satellites, which will enhance data collection and increase revenues and customers, is progressing. Kleos’ Scouting Mission satellites will geolocate maritime radio frequency transmissions to provide global activity-based intelligence irrespective of the presence of AIS (Automatic Identification Systems) or any other positioning system, or when imagery is unclear and targets are out of maritime patrol range. The geolocation data will enable governments and organisations to detect hidden maritime activity such as drug and people smuggling, piracy and illegal fishing as well as identify those in need of search and rescue at sea.

Kleos CEO Andy Bowyer said that satellite launches are highly complex, requiring extensive pre-flight testing of critical functions that cannot be fast-tracked without compromising the mission. The company’s Scouting Mission satellites are mission-ready, forming the foundation of future constellations. When they launch in December, Kleos is on track to generate the firm’s first revenues in Q1 of 2020.”

¹The scouting mission is comprised of 4x smallsats built by GomSpace in Denmark.

These small but mighty satellites can travel to the International Space Station (ISS) and assist any variety of enterprises with a simple, cost-effective way to fly research, technology or any activity on-board the ISS, thus opening up the research capability of the space station to the communities that will help to develop the LEO economy.

SpaceApps is a pioneering ISS research service that enables commercial companies, educational institutions and researchers to conduct experiments in space environment, developing the LEO economy.

Space Applications Services (SpaceApps), developer and integrator of systems and payloads for the International Space Station (ISS), on-orbit servicing and lunar destinations,  will showcase its ground-breaking ICE Cubes service to delegates at IAC 2019 in Washington, DC from 21-25 October at booth 481.

ICE Cubes describes their services as a simple, cost-effective way to fly research, technology or any activity on-board the ISS, opening up the research capability of the space station to the communities that will help to develop the LEO economy. This will be critically important to ensure that the ISS remains relevant when it is opened up to commercial opportunities.

ICE Cubes provides fast access to space for any researcher, company, school and university around the world. ICE Cubes payloads (from as small as 1U) are ideal to conduct scientific experiments, perform R&D in space and pursue in-orbit demonstration and validation of technologies.

Richard Aked, CEO, SpaceApps said that making space a part of every-day value chains and businesses is vital to ensure that the LEO economy becomes viable for humanity in the future. In opening up access to this unique environment, they are allowing commercial entities as well as young people in research institutes the opportunity to see what they can do in space. It’s no longer the preserve of space agencies and huge technology companies but access is being democratized for all. It’s about real people seeing how they can benefit from space and how they develop a new future in the space environment.

Fast-track access through ICE Cubes allows the development of disruptive innovation for R&D in pharma, biotech, novel materials, food, crop science, regenerative medicine and other highly relevant areas that actively benefit humanity through LEO environment assets. The access to a space environment also allows technology companies to validate and demonstrate their technologies, processes and systems and raise related TRL levels before bringing space technologies to their respective market.

Richard continued that the beauty of the ICE Cubes service is that they are regularly delivering and returning payloads to the ISS and users can also interact in real-time with their experiments over the internet, allowing them to send commands and to receive telemetry in real-time. They look forward to seeing the incredible developments that ICE Cubes will influence.

ICE Cubes has a strategic partnership with ESA and is an accredited implementation partner with the ISS U.S. National Lab that is responsible for operating the U.S. portion of the ISS as one of the national laboratories for use by non-NASA U.S. government agencies, academic institutions, and the private sector.

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has transitioned the Planet commercial imagery subscription service from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to the NRO.

As part of the transition, the NRO awarded Planet an unclassified, multi-year subscription service contract for daily, large-area, 3 to 5 meter resolution commercial imagery collection.

Recognizing the importance of mission continuity, the scope of the new NRO contract is comparable to NGA’s previous contracts with Planet and includes access to new daily unclassified imagery over multiple areas of interest to military planners, warfighters, and the national security community. The transition is consistent with NGA’s and NRO’s role in exploring new and viable commercial GEOINT opportunities for national security missions.

Pete Muend, Director, NRO’s Commercial Systems Program Office, said that with its large constellation of satellites, Planet can image country — and even continent-sized areas — every day. This capability to provide daily revisit over large areas of the Earth gives analysts unparalleled opportunities to discover and monitor activity for a wide range of applications. The NRO is committed to ensuring NGA and its customers continue to have access to Planet imagery to perform the vital analysis needed to create value-added geospatial products for our partners and policy makers.

David Gauthier, Director of NGA’s Source Commercial and Business Operations Group, added that NGA’s 2016 Planet subscription played a role in the agency’s analytic transformation, where the NRO is now focused less on pixels and more on information content and services. Planet imagery demonstrated the value that daily revisit of large areas, at 3 to 5 meter resolutions, to several mission areas – especially when combined with geospatial analytics. With the transition, NGA can continue to shift its focus to emerging commercial GEOINT products and services that uniquely support our user community.

ICEYE has announced that the company’s recently developed Spotlight imaging mode, which enables 1 meter radar imaging from the company’s satellite constellation, is now commercially available to customers around the world.

ICEYE Spotlight imaging is purpose-built to achieve a high resolution that supports a variety of use cases for both commercial and government customers.

ICEYE Spotlight radar satellite image of the Kuwait International Airport’s new terminal under construction.

Image is courtesy of the company.

The successful deployment of Spotlight imaging for commercial customers is a major milestone for ICEYE, as well as a technological achievement. There are few comparable services available worldwide, and ICEYE is currently the only organization in the world to provide this capability as a commercial service from such small SAR microsatellites. High resolution radar imagery is especially useful for distinguishing between small objects, and in helping data users classify larger objects with more certainty. 1 meter Spotlight radar imagery is particularly useful in detailed volume monitoring of stockpiles, vehicle count monitoring, property damage estimation, and oil transshipment monitoring.

Example Spotlight SAR Data, featuring two locations in Singapore,are available for download on the ICEYE website in SLC and GRDformats.

Image is courtesy of the company.

ICEYE was the first organization in the world to develop technology that can achieve under 1 meter resolution imagery from SAR satellites under 100 kg. in mass. The latest two ICEYE SAR Satellites were launched in July of 2019. The company continues to grow its commercially available SAR satellite constellation with additional satellite launches at an increasing pace.

Pekka Laurila, CSO and Co-Founder of ICEYE, said the commodities sector is an early example where the availability of high-resolution SAR imaging can have dramatic impacts. It is now possible to track specific locations, often, with high reliability, and at an incredible level of detail. The potential benefits for our early users are immense, as the competitive edge our data provides is still very fresh in the market.

Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-Founder of ICEYE, commented that the company and its partners are in a unique position in the world with this new commercial availability of high-resolution radar satellite data.

OQ Technology, a Luxembourg-based satellite IoT and M2M service company, has successfully tested Narrow-Band IoT waveforms and synchronization procedures using a third-party smallsat.

The Tiger mission, which was approved and signed on July 26, 2019, demonstrates that NB-IoT technology can be used on flying Software-Defined Radio (SDR) payloads by uploading the waveforms to test the performance, paving the way for using Software-Defined Radio payloads as a service to provide connectivity.

The satellites used are GOMX-4A and GOMX-4B from GomSpace. NB-IoT is a Low Power Wide Area Network radio technology standard developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) to enable a global standard for IoT and M2M connectivity as a part of its Release 13 specifications (LTE Advanced Pro) in June 2016.

Artistic rendition of GomSpace smallsats on-orbit.

Image is courtesy of the company.

As of 2019, the Global mobile Suppliers Association has identified more than 160 operators across 69 countries investing NB-IoT network technologies. The 3GPP ecosystem is a global consortium backed by several telecommunication associations from countries such as Japan, USA, China, Europe, India, South Korea, and contributions coming from more than 680 individual member companies such as Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson, Apple, Google, ZTE, Huawei, NEC, Samsung, AT&T, Verizon, etc. that sell equipment, chipsets, software, handsets connectivity and other services in the global telecommunications market.

As a natural evolution of technology and market trends, 3GPP has foreseen the growing demand for global IoT connectivity and has retained NB-IoT as a part of its 5G standards (Release 15) and is working towards expanding the technology’s potential using Non-terrestrial Network (NTN) services for its release 17 which is expected to be rolled out by 2021/2022. NTN services leverage the use of non-terrestrial entities such as satellites in LEO, MEO, GEO, High Altitude Platforms and drones to extend coverage, service and capacity for mobile telephony, IoT and M2M connectivity.

OQ Technology began working on cutting edge R&D in 2016 to provide NB-IoT connectivity over LEO satellite, a standard with worldwide ecosystem and backed up by a global mobile standardization body. OQ Technology is targeting the cellular IoT communication market, as well as the Oil & Gas, Maritime, Industry 4.0, and Transport segments, particularly for the management and tracking of assets in remote areas. Whether this is digital oilfield applications, offshore monitoring, SCADA applications, asset tracking, fleet management, smart metering or predictive maintenance.

NB-IoT is a challenge for LEO due to high Doppler and delay environments. OQ Technology has successfully performed a “first-in-the-world” test of a 5G IoT technology over cubesats, and a “first” in using Orthogonal-Frequency-Division Multiple Access waveforms in a smallsat. OQ Technology will further experiments as a part of the Tiger mission over the next 3 months to optimize the link and system performance. OQ Technology aims to be a global 5G massive machine-type communications service provider to enable mobile operators extend their coverage beyond urban areas. The technology development has been partly supported by Luxembourg government through the LuxIMPULSE program.

Rocket Lab has successfully launched their ninth Electron mission, deploying a single spacecraft to orbit for satellite manufacturer Astro Digital.

The launch of the Astro Digital smallsat aboard
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

Photo is courtesy of the company.

The mission, named ‘As The Crow Flies,’ lifted off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula at 01:22 UTC, October 17, 2019 (14:22 NZDT). Approximately 71 minutes after lift-off, Electron’s Kick Stage deployed the payload to a circular orbit of more than 1,000 km. – more than twice the altitude of any Electron mission to date.

Rocket Lab successfully launches ninth Electron mission, deploys payload to highest orbit yet achieved.

Image is courtesy of the company.

The mission successfully demonstrated recent upgrades to the Kick Stage’s 3D-printed Curie engine, including the move to a bi-propellant design for improved performance. Curie also serves as the propulsion system on Rocket Lab’s Photon satellite bus, and the flight-proven engine upgrades support enduring missions in LEO, as well as higher orbits.   

This mission takes the total number of satellites deployed by Rocket Lab to 40 and continues the company’s track record of 100 percent mission success for customers. 

The spacecraft on board was a Palisade technology demonstration satellite, a 16U cubesat with on-board propulsion and next generation communications systems developed by Astro Digital, and software developed by Advanced Solutions Inc., including an advanced version of ASI’s MAX Flight Software.

Astro Digital’s Corvus smallsat platform.

The mission earned its moniker, ‘As The Crow Flies,’ as a nod to Astro Digital’s Corvus Spacecraft Platform, which provides flexible and cost-effective solutions across a wide range of applications and mission profiles on bus variants ranging from 6U and 16U cubesats to ESPA Class. Corvus is also a widely distributed genus of birds that includes crows.

‘As The Crow Flies’ was pulled forward in Rocket Lab’s 2019 manifest after a customer originally slated for this window requested a later launch date.

Rocket Lab Founder and Chief Executive, Peter Beck, offered congratulations to the Astro Digital team for readying the spacecraft and taking advantage of an earlier launch opportunity. The company’s teams worked closely to deliver a flawless mission in a demonstration of the truly responsive space launch that small satellites need. No longer do small satellite operators have to accept the limitations of flying as a secondary payload, nor do they have to wait endlessly on the manifest of unproven launch vehicles. Frequent, responsive, and reliable launch is the new norm for small satellites thanks to Electron.”

Rocket Lab’s next mission is scheduled for lift-off from Launch Complex 1 from late November. 

LeoLabs, Inc. has launched their Kiwi Space Radar (KSR) — as the first commercial radar to track objects in LEO smaller than 10 centimeters, the KSR sets a new standard for tracking the full range of threats to satellites from orbital debris.

LeoLabs’ Kiwi Space Radar installation in New Zealand.

Photo is courtesy of the company.

Located in New Zealand, the KSR also expands LeoLabs’ radar network to the southern hemisphere, and marks the first of a series of next generation LeoLabs radars to be deployed globally.

Michael Nicolls, Co-Founder and LeoLabs CTO, said the Kiwi Space Radar raises the bar on addressing the threat of collisions that have never before been tracked in LEO. By operating at a higher frequency than the firm’s earlier sensors, the KSR was designed to track an estimated 250,000 additional objects down to 2 centimeters in size. These objects account for most of the risk of collisions in space and KSR is the first big step toward addressing that risk. It will enable thousands of new satellites to safely use LEO.

Dan Ceperley, Co-Founder and CEO of LeoLabs, added that the Kiwi Space Radar represents a huge step in executing on the company’s vision for customers and investors. As thousands of satellites and new constellations deploy into LEO, LeoLabs’ mission is to provide a backdrop of data-driven transparency and certainty to support satellite operators, regulators,space agencies, and industries that rely on satellite services. Today’s KSR announcement proves a foundational piece of this vision. The firm’s radar network constitutes a clear strategic advantage in building the leading LEO services platform and the ‘catalogue of the future’ for LEO.

In addition to tracking small debris, the Kiwi Space Radar incorporates other significant features:

• Automated search capability. As LeoLabs builds out the LEO catalog of the future, the KSR provides the ability to automatically search, discover objects and events.Generating orbital information without the need for human intervention will provide a more timely and complete picture for SSA and traffic management services.
   
• Southern hemisphere coverage. The KSR is the first phased-array radar of its class located in the southern hemisphere. It improves frequency of revisits, enables better orbit assessment, and improves monitoring of maneuvers and events
  .
• Improved precision in measurements and orbit determination. As the KSR dramatically increases the quantity and quality of observations for each satellite and piece of orbital debris, LeoLabs can deliver greater accuracy and timeliness to support mission decisions and threat assessment.

Mr. Ceperley noted that locating the Kiwi Space Radar in New Zealand was a strategic decision for LeoLabs and the company is delighted to become a full-fledged participant in this emerging space sector. The firm’s investment model is aligned with New Zealand’s vision of sustainable development and responsible stewardship of space. Through the leadership of the New Zealand Space Agency, and initiatives such as the Innovative Partnership program from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment(MBIE), New Zealand is building what we believe to be one of the great space sectors for the next generation. A benefit of the LeoLabs presence in New Zealand is that the company has had the opportunity to engage across many communities, ranging from Ministerial levels to local communities, including schools, local government, entrepreneurs, and universities. Plans are to engage in this same “community-based” model as the firm expands to other parts of the world going forward.