Expedition Space: Space Launch, Events, News

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – Iceye unveiled a new product May 10, wide-area Scan imaging focused on areas as large as 10,000 square kilometers. Since Iceye flew the first small synthetic-aperture radar satellites in 2018 , the company has developed a variety of products to help customers zoom in on specific areas or detect changes over time . The new wide-area Scan mode extends the area customers can view in a single scene. “We realized some time ago that with our flat-panel, phased-array radars we can scan really big areas,” Steve Young, Iceye vice president for business development and sales, told SpaceNews . “Once we managed to make it work and get the ground processing working, we thought we would release that as a commercial product.” The new wide-area Scan mode is likely to appeal to maritime customers, Young said. “It’s very good at spotting ships in very large areas of ocean and along coastlines,” he added. When testing the wide-area Scan mode, Iceye captured SAR ima...

by Debra Werner The United States is expected to play a supporting role in an international campaign to monitor greenhouse gas emissions from space. Through the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites, nations are coordinating efforts for space-based monitoring of air quality, greenhouse gases, the ozone layer and natural climate drivers like solar energy. China, Europe and Japan are making major investments in satellites to help verify how well countries are fulfilling commitments they made to reducing greenhouse gas emissions as part of the Paris climate agreement. The United States, in contrast, is preparing to demonstrate sophisticated greenhouse gas sensor technologies but currently has no plans for ambitious atmospheric monitoring missions. “Other countries are making great contributions and pushing as hard as they possibly can,” said David Crisp, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory atmospheric physicist helping to coordinate efforts to track carbon dioxide and methane by th...

by Debra Werner Earlier this month, atmospheric carbon dioxide reached a daily average of 421 parts per million, 50% higher than levels measured before the industrial revolution, according to data gathered at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory. That information came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory which tracks atmospheric gases and other climate change drivers and their impacts. Many different organizations within NOAA monitor climate change with data and imagery captured by ground-based, airborne, maritime and satellite sensors. NOAA officials then gauge the accuracy of the information, analyze it and compare it with historical observations to detect trends. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information determined, for example, that in March the average temperature in the contiguous United States was 7.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.2 degrees above average for the month. Overall, precipitation for March was 1.5 millimeter...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO — KSAT is rapidly installing antennas around the world to keep pace with the dramatic rise in small satellite activity. In 2021 alone, Norway-based KSAT is on track to add 42 antennas to KSATlite, its network that supports small satellite constellations. At the end of 2020, that network included 22 antennas. In the span of six months, from September 2020 to March 2021, traffic on the KSATlite network grew as quickly as it did for KSAT’s overall network between 2010 and 2018, Rolf Skatteboe, KSAT CEO and president told SpaceNews by email. “The main reason for this is that all of the satellite operators are expanding their fleet, moving from that one satellite to a constellation of many,” he added. Traffic on the KSATlite network doubled from 10,000 satellite passes per month to 20,000 satellite passes in the span of six months in 2020. By June, the network is likely to handle 30,000 passes because it already is exceeding 1,000 daily passes. KSAT see...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO — Kleos Space is conducting a six-month test of technology for in-space manufacturing of large 3D carbon fiber structures that could be used to construct solar arrays, star shades and interferometry antennas. The company with operations in Luxembourg, the United States and United Kingdom is best known for radio frequency reconnaissance satellites. In the background, however, Kleos has been designing and developing in-space manufacturing technology called Futrism to robotically produce a carbon-fiber I-beam with embedded fiber-optic cables that is more than 100 meters long. “It’s something that we have linked to our roadmap for RF, because it’s something that could deploy very large antennas for RF reconnaissance,” Kleos CEO Andy Bowyer told SpaceNews . “However, it’s useful for a whole range of other applications as well that we are very keen to work with partners on. We firmly believe that manufacturing in space is the future.” In fact, the technolo...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – The 36 th annual Space Symposium will follow a hybrid model, streaming keynote remarks, presentations, panel discussions from the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs Aug. 23-26 to virtual attendees around the world. Currently, the Space Foundation is preparing for 50% occupancy in meeting rooms with total attendance of nearly 6,000 people including attendees, exhibitors, media and support staff. In comparison, the 35 th Space Symposium in 2019 brought together more than 15,000 people. The 36 th Space Symposium is likely to be the first event in the United States to bring the commercial, civil and military space communities together after a year of events cancelled or moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s not yet clear how strong international participation will be since the United States and other countries continue to impose travel restrictions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Representatives from more than 40 countries atten...

by Debra Werner Lockheed Martin Space hired 2,700 people plus 700 interns in 2020, a year unlike any other for human resources managers. Almost overnight, the prime contractor with about 23,000 employees switched from its traditional in-person approach to virtual recruitment, interviewing and training. SpaceNews correspondent Debra Werner spoke with Lockheed Martin Space executives Nick Spain, human resources vice president, Renu Aggarwal, talent acquisition director, and Heather Erickson, organizational development director, about the opportunities and challenges posed by heightened demand for talent amid a pandemic. How do you find new employees? Nick Spain: I have a phenomenal staff. We have folks that think about college hiring, building relationships with schools. We partner with universities and two-year schools. We have programs in place for military hiring. We also have a pretty robust STEM program. We’re making sure that we’re giving people opportunities, whether inter...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – LeoLabs’ announced April 22 that two S-band radars in Costa Rica have begun tracking objects in low Earth orbit and delivering data to customers. “The Costa Rica Space Radar completes our coverage of low Earth orbit,” Dan Ceperley, LeoLabs CEO and co-founder, told SpaceNews . “It’s the first radar in our network that tracks objects in low inclination orbits.” LeoLabs operates six phased-array radars at four sites. The Silicon Valley firm operates one UHF radar in Texas and another in Alaska. In Costa Rica, like in New Zealand, LeoLabs operates two S-band radars on a single site to detect and track small space objects. Having a second S-band radar site “is the key for us being able to track and maintain custody of objects smaller than 10 centimeters,” said Ed Lu, LeoLabs co-founder and vice president of strategic projects . Since it was founded in 2015, LeoLabs has been mapping spacecraft and debris in low Earth orbit. The firm’s initial radars...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – Albedo, the space startup planning to offer Earth imagery with a resolution of 10 centimeters per pixel, raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Initialized Capital. Additional investors include Liquid 2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Jetstream and Rebel Fund. “The funding will be used to hire more engineers on both the space and ground teams, as well as to continue the development of the first satellite with our partner suppliers,” Topher Haddad, Albedo co-founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. In its April 22 funding announcement, Albedo also revealed a slate of angel investors: retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom Sheridan; Keith Masback, former CEO of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation; Lookout co-founder Kevin Mahaffey; Daniel Kan, Cruise co-founder and chief product officer; Immad Akhund, Mercury co-founder and CEO; James Park, Fitbit cofounder and former CEO; and Harsh Patel, former Galvanize CEO. One of the firm’s goals was to attract ...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – AE Industrial Partners subsidiary American Pacific Corp. announced a multimillion-dollar investment in Frontier Aerospace, a space propulsion startup based in Simi Valley, California. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Private equity firm AE Industrial Partners has become well known in the space industry since last year when it founded Redwire, a space structures firm growing rapidly through acquisitions that plans to become a publicly traded company through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition corporation. In 2020 AE Industrial Partners acquired American Pacific, a specialty materials manufacturer based in Cedar City, Utah. Frontier is American Pacific’s first investment since its acquisition. “With our investment in Frontier, we now have a strategic partner in next-generation, in-space liquid propulsion technology,” American Pacific CEO Hal Murdock said in a statement. “Jim and the Frontier team bring a strong space heritage and hav...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – A consortium led by the State of California, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Planet announced plans April 15 for a constellation of hyperspectral satellites to pinpoint, quantify and track point sources of methane and carbon dioxide. The constellation is one element of Carbon Mapper, a public-private partnership aimed at providing information to help limit greenhouse gas emissions. California government agencies including the state’s Air Resources Board have been laying the groundwork for Carbon Mapper since 2016 when then-Gov. Jerry Brown reacted to Trump Administration threat to NASA climate research by saying, “California will launch its own damn satellites.” Partners, including the University of Arizona, Arizona State University, the High Tide Foundation and the non-profit RMI, are supporting the campaign to pair hyperspectral sensors developed at JPL with satellites roughly the size of Planet SkySats. “These home-grown satellites are a gam...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – Iceye has established a satellite manufacturing facility, research and development laboratory, and mission operations center for U.S.-licensed spacecraft at its new Iceye U.S. headquarters in Irvine, California. “A huge part of our nation’s space industrial base and centers for innovation are located here in Southern California,” Jerry Welsh, Iceye U.S. CEO told SpaceNews. “In addition, there’s an amazing pool of talent and we have tight collaboration with some of the other space companies in the area.” Finland-based Iceye established Iceye U.S. in early 2020. The company announced plans April 15 to expand its U.S. organization in response to rising government and commercial demand for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery and data, Welsh said. “U.S. customers, particularly U.S. government customers, have a preference towards working with U.S. entities,” Welsh said. “There are also certain security operations that make it much easier to work here...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – York Space Systems has learned a lot from operating its first production-model spacecraft in orbit for two years. The biggest takeaway, though, has been the need to automate satellite handling on the ground. “In the first few months, it became clear it was going to require as many as 15 different people to operate a constellation for a specific customer,” Charles Beames, York Space Systems executive chairman, told SpaceNews. “So, we got down to business automating that. We’ve gone down from 15 people to no people, to zero.” Through four phases of flight software development, York engineers have upgraded S-Class satellites and ground systems to handle common anomalies. If solar radiation causes a spike in voltage, for example, the ground systems know how to correct that autonomously, Beames added. York was founded in 2012 to slash the cost of satellite manufacturing and operations with a standard S-Class satellite. Automating satellite operations i...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO — Orbital Sidekick announced a $16 million Series A funding round April 13 led by Singapore investment giant Temasek that clears the way for the company to complete development of its first constellation of hyperspectral imaging satellites. “Temasek is a great foothold within the Asia Pacific region,” Daniel Katz, Orbital Sidekick CEO and co-founder, told  SpaceNews . “Like any other space company, one of our value propositions is serving clients on a global scale.” After closing the $16 million investment round, Orbital Sidekick has completed the conditions for receiving another $16 million in U.S. Air Force funding . In October, the San Francisco startup announced the $16 million award from the U.S. Air Force commercial investment group AFVentures’s Strategic Financing program to support the launch of its six-satellite Global Hyperspectral Observation Satellite constellation, known as GHOSt. Orbital Sidekick plans to begin launching GHOSt satel...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – L3Harris Technologies and Raytheon Intelligence & Space won NASA contracts to carry forward studies of next-generation imagers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary and Extended Orbits (GEO-XO) satellites. The one-year, firm-fixed price contracts worth about $6 million apiece set the stage for the two weather sensor leaders to compete to build infrared and visible-imaging instruments for the NOAA satellites to follow the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R (GOES-R) series. NASA awarded the contracts on behalf of NOAA, the agency funding, managing and preparing to operate the satellites. L3Harris is the incumbent. The company based in Fort Wayne, Indiana, builds GOES-R’s Advanced Baseline Imagers. In addition, L3Harris manufactures Cross Track Infrared Sounders for the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), Japan’s Advanced Himawari Imagers and South Korea’s Advanced Meteorological Instrument. ...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft announced plans April 6 to move automated satellite image processing technology developed by Thales Alenia Space into its Azure Orbital platform. With Thales Alenia’s DeeperVision software, “images downlinked by Earth observation satellites can be immediately and systematically analyzed as soon as they are produced,” according to a Thales Alenia news release. Since Microsoft unveiled Azure Orbital last year to connect satellites to its cloud infrastructure, the software giant has been equipping datacenters with ground stations to help customers retrieve information from Earth observation, remote sensing and communications satellites. “We continue to build ground stations in other locations and integrate with partner ground stations to further our customers’ ability to communicate with their satellites for data ingestion,” Tom Keane, Microsoft Azure Global corporate vice president, said in an April 6 blog. Microsoft is working with vario...

by Debra Werner   SAN FRANCISCO — Long-term space investors aren’t surprised by the recent surge of space industry mergers and acquisitions. In fact, they say, it’s right on time. Dylan Taylor, Voyager Space Holdings. chairman and CEO. “We all knew it was going to happen,” said Dylan Taylor, Voyager Space Holdings chairman and CEO. “This is the way industries evolve.” Venture capitalists bet $1.8 billion on space startups in 2015, which was more than the total space-related venture investment for the previous 15 years. Since venture funds generally have 10-year time horizons, investors tend to look for exits in five to seven years. “We always expected to see exits around the year 2021,” said Chad Anderson, founder and managing partner of Space Capital, a seed stage venture capital firm. Even if the timing isn’t surprising, it is remarkable how the current wave of mergers and acquisitions coincides with investor attention. “Public market and private market interest in s...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – Italian ground segment provider Leaf Space announced plans March 24 to establish a U.S. office to serve government and commercial customers. “There is a clear appetite among U.S. satellite and launch vehicle operators to simplify, outsource and maximize the value from ground services and we believe that need is only going to grow,” said Jai Dialani, Leaf Space U.S. managing director and business development lead, said in a statement. Leaf Space, founded in 2014, offers ground segment services to customers including Astrocast of Switzerland, D-Orbit of Italy, the European Space Agency, Toronto-based Kepler Communications, Kleos Space of Luxembourg, and U.S. firms Momentus and Swarm Technologies. Leaf Space provides ground segment services in North America for Kleos, Kepler, Momentus and Swarm. “We have been working with Leaf Space on our ground segment operations for over a year and the expertise they provide is very valuable to us,” Kleos CEO Andr...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – Evona, a U.K. space industry recruiting startup, is preparing to establish a U.S. office as part of a campaign to help satisfy global demand for space sector employees. Bristol-based Evona has been growing rapidly since it was founded in 2019 to recruit workers for entrepreneurial space companies. Evona’s year-over-year revenue jumped more than sixfold in the last year and its staff has tripled in two years, the company announced March 17. Evona already recruits workers around the world. “About 60% of the business we do is in the U.S., about 30% in Europe, and about 10% is in Singapore, India, and all over the world, Tom Kelly, EVONA co-CEO and co-founder, told SpaceNews . Evona helps companies identify and recruit workers with varied talents from RF, mechanical and systems engineering to welding and fabricating. To expand the potential pool of space sector workers, Evona also organizes school and community events and panel discussions. “There i...

by Debra Werner SAN FRANCISCO – Radar satellite startup Umbra plans to capture imagery with a resolution as high as 15 centimeters per pixel thanks to a Federal Communications Commission license. The FCC granted Umbra, a Santa Barbara, California, startup preparing to launch its first X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) microsatellite this year, an experimental license in February to operate high-bandwidth SAR using the 1,200 MHz band centered on 9.8 GHz and low-bandwidth SAR with the 600 MHz band centered on 9.6 GHz. Gabe Dominocielo, Umbra co-founder and president, referred to the FCC license as “hitting the regulatory jackpot.” “Bandwidth is the limiting factor in determining slant range resolution, and ultimately ground plane resolution in the cross-track direction,” Dominocielo said by email. “Improvement in resolution is proportional to the amount of bandwidth available for use by the sensor.” Umbra raised $32 million in an investment round announced in January. Th...