By Chris Forrester
Noel Rimalovski, MD, GH Partners, opened Day 2 of the Silicon Valley Space Week’s Satellite Innovation strand, and discussed Emerging Trends in Satellite Manufacturing, in a fascinating panel. Mr Rimalovski polled the audience and 80% of respondents said they believed that the Covid pandemic was still affecting production and component lead times.
Col. (Ret) Dean Bellamy, EVP/National Security Space, Redwire, said his experience would reflect the move towards smaller satellites and the past 5 years’ experience had shown how important it was that satellite manufacturers could depend on their suppliers in terms of reliability. Another trend was the expectation or even requirement for earlier milestone financial payments.
Chris Winslet, GM, Blue Canyon Technologies, said his key trend was greater use of automation, and that cycle times were being helped and reduced dramatically. We believe in ‘smart automation’. This makes sense if you are producing many, many items. “But if you are frequently modifying your production then be careful and if possible work smartly as far as automation is concerned.”
John Borrego, VP of Production, Machina Labs, is already using large robots in its manufacturing processes and building its structures. He explained that aerospace engineers were a dying breed and automation was essential to fill the gap. “The pandemic forced business to change their business models because production of a component which pre-Covid took only a matter of weeks was still taking months and months. You need to change the way you are thinking and if possible remove the human element, but first you need to fully understand the overall process.”
Karolis Senvaitis, Dir. of Engineering Operations, Kongsberg NanoAvionics is a business that is just 10 years old but he said that integration could be dangerous. “Vertical integration could mean that you would be taking all the responsibilities and risks. In many cases it was better to work with trusted partners.” Automation must start with the design stage right through to the testing process.
Tim Shroyer, CTO, CPI, builds ground stations, amplifiers and related equipment. “We build large structures, including those for Lunar traffic. “The trend we have noticed is a shift from Video to a greater variety of traffic to be handled. We have had to keep up with these changes.” Shroyer said he was comfortable that most times CPI was highly competitive when it manufactured its own kit, “but not every time. You have to be flexible.”
The panel addressed the role of AI in the manufacturing sector, and Winslett said his firm was trying to understand the whole process but it was vital to be aware of where the production data was coming from. Senvaitis told delegates that he was cautious about AI and this was because of the trustworthiness of the data that was being used. “AI can interpret data incorrectly”. Borrego said they had a team of development engineers interpreting data prior to use in AI, but it was still very much ‘trial and error’ in how the data and the human interaction was made. “But at the moment we are still scratching the surface as far as AI is involved although every piece of data we have employed we store for future use.”