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Direct From SmallSat Symposium, Dr. Derek M. Tournear, Director, Space Development Agency, Keynote Address

Dr. Derek Tournear

I’m excited to talk about the Space Development Agency and what we have done over the past year and our year term and long term visions. I want to talk about the many products that we’re developing and delivering, so SDA is set up to exist and operate almost as a commercial entity within the Defense Department and, as such, we are very focused on product delivery. Those products are capabilities that we are giving to the warfighter.

The two products were are primarily focused on are, #1, Beyond-Line-Of-Sight (BLOS) targeting for time-sensitive targets, or mobile targets … think mobile missile launchers or ships and being able to detect them, identify them, calculate a firing control solution on those targets, and then provide those data directly to a weapons system and do all that from space.

Product #2 is to be able to do that exact same mission as Product #1 except now, instead of mobile missiles and ships, I want to be able to do that for advanced missiles, so hypersonic glide vehicles and those types of things. Detect them, track them, calculate a fire control solution and give it to the warfighters. Those are the products that the SDA is focused on delivering for the warfighter in the future.

Now one question — why do we need the SDA to do this, I mean, we’ve got the Space Force, we’ve got a lot of different entities and most of you have already talked about this, so I’ll only touch on it briefly, but all boils down to the innovator’s dilemma. The same thing that affects industry affects government, as well. That is, when you have the large entity that is entrenched with delivering to an existing, entrenched customer, they are primarily focused on delivering those capabilities in a low list, incremental approach. And that’s nothing wrong with the large entity, whether that be a large corporation that’s been building a product, or rather that be an organization within the government that is delivering certain products.

But the key thing to realize is, the innovator dilemma is real. The innovator’s dilemma simply states that you cannot focus on innovation at the same time you’re focusing on delivering a product to an existing customer. What enables innovation is the ability for to go out and look at products that affect a lot of new customers, new bases, and you can have a small win and it’s a big deal for you. For a startup corporation, for a startup company or a startup entity within the government, a small win is a big deal. For a larger entity, it’s not, so you’re going to be focused on low risk, incremental approaches.

The SDA is focused on going out there, and going out there a broad set of customers, our customers are all combatant commanders that the department feels can execute the mission, make sure we can provide those capabilities, those products that I previously mentioned. In order to do that, we’re taking a completely different approach. The approach we’re taking is to stop focusing on high value, low density, capabilities by high value, low density satellites and focus on high density, low value satellites, or focus on proliferation. So that’s scenario #1. We’re going to provide those products via proliferation. Hundreds to thousands of satellites that provides us with the resilience needed and it also provides us with the timely access needed to deliver those products.

Scenario #2 is spiral development. One of the key things that is different are going to field the capabilities… we’re going to field those products every two years. And each tranche presents new capabilities that incrementally improve over the previous set. And we’re going to continue to build these up, as threats evolve and as technology evolves.

We want to make sure we take technology that is ready to field today and get that to orbit within two years to provide those new capabilities to the warfighter. That is different than looking at what is the ultimate set of requirements that we need to deliver and then develop a program to build and deliver that set of capabilities and that could require cost growth, it could require schedule growth, all to make sure you hit that given set of requirements. We’re not basing off that… we have spiral development. We’re going to field new tranches every two years and just continue to spiral up those capabilities.

How are we going to provide those next two products? We have what is known as the National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA). That is our layered approach to delivering those capabilities.

The icon on the right are the actual set of systems — this is a functional block diagram that talks about how we are going to deliver those capabilities. The backbone is the transport… that’s that blue gray box in the middle. That is the mesh network of hundreds of satellites, all optically interconnected, that provides a low latency data comm network and also provides connectivity directly down to existing, tactical beta links. We’re not fielding new equipment to the user on the ground. We’re going over their existing tactical beta links from that transport layer.

OK, so that’s great. That’s the backbone, that’s how we tie everything together to make sure I can have high bandwidth, low latency communications directly to the end-user on the ground. What really makes this powerful is now I can put data onto that network that the user needs. So the three sensing layers off to the right, those are the ones that provide the data to that transport layer.

Number One is Tracking. That is our overhead, persistent infrared tech, those are the satellites that provide the detection and tracking for the advanced missile threat. SDA is building those out with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to make certain we can field that constellation.

Number Two is Custody. Think of target custody. That is our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) — that is the layer that provides the ability to detect and track those mobile targets that I mentioned previously. That is a set of constellation of electro-optical, a set of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), that can be a set of SIGNIT satellites. All of those data feed into what we call the Custody layer. And this is a mixer of commercial applications and commercial constellations as well as government owned and operated constellations. When we’re working with industries to make sure we can get commercial data from their commercial imagery satellites onto what we call our Custody layer, we can fuse all of those data together.

And the Deterrence is the third one, that is our Space Situational Awareness (SSA) layer. And right now we’re not doing a lot with that because the Space Force is actually focused a lot on that area to focus on how they can improve that resiliency and those detection capabilities. Primarily, we looking at cisLunar space, but AFRL (Air Force Research Laboratory) has some programs in that, so, we’re just watching that as part of our Deterrence layer.

The key things is to get all of those data, get it to the Transport layer, so it can be fused and further disseminated out to the tactical edge, out to the warfighter. Now a lot of that essentially takes some magic, right? That’s what the Battle Management light blue layer is. All of this onboard processing, all of the real-time algorithms that enable this data fusion, automatic target recognition, and network management, all of that is what we call our Battle Management layer. And that is a federated layer that runs on all of the satellites, but primarily the Transport satellites, so that we can do federated processing or cloud processing across all of those satellites to enable the ability to do this computation in real-time.

One other layer is our Navigation layer. Now, Navigation is essentially for free from Transport. If I have that Transport architecture that has all of these optical crosslinks and exquisite timing between the satellites, I can get very precise time and position of the satellite. Then, I can send that data down as a Navigation message over those existing Tactical beta links. In essence, people can get a Navigation timing message over their existing comm links from the Transport satellite.

That’s what we’re doing for alternative navigation. And then of course there’s the Support layer — that is our ground support equipment — that is our launch and operations — and any special user that we would field — right now, we don’t anticipate any. That would all be handled by the support layer. That is the ‘how’ we are going to provide those capabilities.

Now, when would we actually field these capabilities. As I mentioned, we’re developing these in tranches. The first set right now, basically last year and this year, we’re building up some technology developments, primarily working with DARPA and AFRL. Space Development Agency does not want to focus on tech development … we want to focus on capability and product field.

We’re going to fly a few demos in 2021, but primarily it’s all to show those capabilities that we can go from space over existing tactical data links so that we can show we can use commoditized optical crosslinks to talk to one another, talk to the ground, and also talk to airborne platforms.

The real capabilities start happening we seal our Tranches. Tranche 0 in FY22, so we’re looking at our first launch in September of 2022, second launch in March of 2023. We want to field 30 satellites total in this Tranche. Twenty of those satellites are Transport satellites. That will show that we can seal this mesh network to show that we can do this computation, we can do the optical networking and that we can actually communicate to the ground and airborne assets. We’ll demonstrate all of that in Tranche 0. We’ll also demonstrate a set of wide field and medium field of view satellites to do the missile tracking mission to show we can network those with Transport, we can actually calculate fire control solutions based on the data.

All of that makes up the Tranche 0 constellation. Then we’re working with mission partners to show we can take Custody, ISR data from their satellites via the ground back to Transport to the tactical edge. And for Navigation, we’ll also show that we can, in essence, do timing transfer and calculate the position of those satellites. We call Tranche 0 our Warfighter Emerging Tranche because it allows people to start to develop their comm ops and their techniques and procedures to work with these kind of data.

Tranche 1 two years later, now we have hundreds of satellites in the Transport layer. We can actually start to get regional persistence for that tactical comm layer and we’ll move that data in and out of theater. For Tracking, right now we’re working within the department to say exactly what would be funded as part of Tranche 1 for Tracking, but ideally, we would have on the order of 47 satellites that would give us enough capabilities for regional persistence to be able to detect advanced missile threats. For Custody, we’re working with mission partners to field out their constellations and get their constellations to plug into Transport to move those data. Some of those mission partners are commercial ISR providers.

Tranche 0 is our immersion Tranche and is essentially the free product, if you will, that will get people hooked on what we’re selling. It will allow them to see the data, understand what proliferated LEO can provide for their situation and then allow them to start to develop their plans around access to those data.

In Tranche 1, that’s when we have initial warfighting capability. This is our Release 1, if you will. This is when we have enough satellites up there so we can actually start to provide persistence over a given region of interest. We can actually start to affect a fight in different regions.

Tranche 2, hundreds more satellites, and now we have global persistence, not just regional persistence. That’s our final operating capability. In Tranche 3, that’s when we start to fold in lessons learned from Tranche 1. We start to pull in new technology that was developed along the way and then we can start to respond to new Tranches as they come online.

Tranche 4 and beyond, every two years, new technology gets fielded, more satellites get fielded, and we adjust based on threat and need. So, that’s how we operate.

How are we doing this execution-wise? One of the key things that we’ve learned over the year is that you can do quite well with distributed operations.

These are all of the locations where SDA has individuals that are working and operating, helping us to make this happen, so we’re distributed. Our next facility is going to open up some ground and mission operations center at in North Dakota. We have distributed operations to make sure we have access to talent where we need to and we can get to those missions in those locations.

The graphic above shows how busy we’ve been in the last year. It seems like not that long ago, when I was in person at the last smallsat conference talking about our plans for 2020, and I just want to highlight that we have been successful in hitting all of the milestones and achieving what we expected to achieve in 2020, even despite all of the challenges with COVID.

These are the contracting actions that we’ve taken over the last year to make sure that we have all of the pieces moving and actually pushing forward delivering these products. Primarily the key thing is that we’ve executed 11 contracts in 2020 — we received our first funding early in February of 2020 and since then we’ve been able to execute.

The key contracts that are critical to that Tranche 0 success. For Transport, we have 20 satellites, 10 on contract from Lockheed Martin and YORK Space Systems. Ground, Naval Research Laboratory is helping us with Ground. Missions Systems Engineering & Integration is done by Perspecta. They’re helping to make sure all of these pieces and parts come together, as we have multiple performers with multiple pieces. Launch was the most recent contract awarded to SpaceX for two launches, one in September of 2022 and the second one no later than March of 2023. And Tracking, we have two performers there, each delivering four satellites — L3Harris and SpaceX. As part of our mission team, MDA has two satellites and they have L3Harris and Northrop Grumman on their team.

All of these performers are the ones actually doing the work. At the SDA, we’re in the government, we don’t actually do anything, we try to enable the folks that are actually doing the work. This is our Tranche 0 team and they’re actually building the satellites and making it happen.

The SDA accomplishments — we did deliver two satellites, nine months after receiving our initial funding. Those two satellites are at the bottom of this graphic. This was our holiday card — this was a joint mission between DARPA, AFRL and SDA to build these two satellites.

Unfortunately, there was a mishap during payload processing down at the Cape, so they were not two of the 143 satellites that were launched as part of the SpaceX Transporter 1 mission. But, the good news is, while they were damaged in payload processing, we will be able to repair them and we will be able to launch them on Transporter-2.

We’ve awarded all of the contracts for all of the performers to build out Tranche 0 and we are now started to being recognized within the Pentagon and within the department as really a change agent. People are seeing what we are doing and that’s good.

Now let’s talk about some about some of the big impacts we’ve had. I cannot overstate the profundity of the proliferation and final development of architecture. When this was first pitched, this whole concept, within the Pentagon, within the department, people looked at the capabilities that we were planning to be able to provide and they said, “Who are those satellites to be able to do that?” With that, we looked at their historical model. This chart reveals the hundreds of millions of dollars per satellite. So, if you want to proliferate hundreds to thousands of these satellites, there’s no way that’s affordable. I contended at the time that, no, the price was going to be actually less than $20 million per satellite and, in fact, it was affordable and I was basing that off what I had seen in industry to that point and what the commercial providers were able to do.

As it turns out, you look at our Transport satellite, those 20 satellites — if you take the average cost of all the NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering costs) on those 20 satellites — it averages out to $14.1 million. It really shows that, yes, in fact, this is believable and it can be done at an affordable cost. And as we push forward on cost one, the key thing there is now we’re talking about on the order of 150 satellites. So, we even need to push that down lower. I believe this is feasible, because we got a lot of responses back to our request for information (RFI) from industry saying, you know, if you’re buying into scale, we can push it down significantly lower than the cost in the current contracts. We’re excited about that. And that really shows the power of proliferation and how we can be resilient against the threats and provide these capabilities in a timely manner.

This is what enabled the revolution for this kind of concept. And it’s not anything the government has done, it really what’s been driven by commercial enterprises, commercial innovation and commercial industry pushing the price down, only in the cost of these satellites, but the cost of launches has dropped significantly as well. That is what is enabling these missions to succeed and that is key. I need industry to partner with me on that, to continue to come up with ways on how to drive that down, how to drive manufacturability up so we can continue to push proliferation and final development.

Some of the details as to how we are marching forward for our product release are shown in the chart above. Tranche 0. As I mentioned, we have a few demos planned in 2021, so I’ll talk a little about those. Obviously, Blackjack at the top, that’s a DARPA demo and they’ve got several different concepts. They’re going to fly two satellites later this year and then they’re going to culminate with more than that, somewhere on the order of a dozen up to 18 satellites in the 2022-2023 timeframe as the full DARPA Blackjack program.

PIRPL is a joint SDA – MDA program. The performer is Northrop Grumman and that is to fly a medium field of view, multi-spectral imager for OPIR (Overhead Persistent Infrared) to be able to demonstrate feasibility and use that for some of our models. That will be launched on NG-16 later this year.

Mandrake II as I mentioned would be on-orbit but, unfortunately, it will now be launched on Transporter-2 in June, so we’re looking forward to that. That will demonstrate optical crosslinks between two satellites, optical crosslink to the ground, and optical crosslink to airborne systems. We’re excited about that.

LINCS, that is a meta-optical crosslinks demonstration. That is General Atomics, they are the performer on that. Again, that’s two satellites demonstrating that we can do optical crosslinks with various, other entities. That will also be launched on Transporter-2.

XVI, that is primarily an AFRL program that we are working with AFRL on because we are definitely a transition partner. That would demonstrate that you can go from space to a Link 16 tactical datalink network. That will be launched later this year.

And, of course, SMC (Space & Missile Systems Center) and DARPA are working a lot of ground operations. MDA is working a lot of ground operations and we’re tracking and working with them on that.

The key thing then is in 2022, that’s when we launch our Tranche 0. That’s 20 Transport satellites, eight wide field of view OPIR satellites and two medium field of view HBTSS (Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor) satellites being built and delivered by MDA.

Then Tranche 1 comes up in 2024 where we have on the order of 150 Transport satellites and, hopefully, depending on what happens within the funding debate in the department, on the order of 40 Tracking satellites.

Longer term plans and what can really be expected… we’re on track to Tranche 0, so that’s pushing forward. All we can do is hope for success there and continue to deliver and make sure we hit those milestones. Obviously the folks that are on contract are the ones that are responsible for making sure they execute. The key thing going forward is Tranche 1. Tranche 1 is going to be a big deal. One hundred and fifty-ish satellites for Transport. Pushing forward, the plan is to issue an RFP (Request for Proposal) this summer for that. We want to get those on contract by the end of this calendar year so that we can build and have all 150 satellites ready for launch for that September 2024 date. That’s what we’re pushing for.

We already have our Request for Information (RFI). We’ve received feedback from industry. We understand that and we’re pulling that in. We plan on coming out with a draft RFP in the summer. Shortly thereafter, after we get feedback from industry, we’ll come out with the real RFP and hope to continue to push forward. That’s what you should be watching for.

Let’s talk about the grand vision overview of what capabilities and product we plan on fielding in the future. We view this as our product roadmap. For Tranche 0 has gone into the detail box, what capabilities will be included in that product. Tranche 1, a little about the details there as far as what capabilities we provide to include in that product as a minimal, viable product. But then, for Tranches 2 , 3, 4 and 5 on out, this is the product roadmap. If folks are looking at what we should be investing in, in industry, to make sure that we can come up with a product that we can sell to the Space Development Agency that they will include in their Tranches that is necessary for the warfighter, this is essentially the product roadmap that you could use for investment.

We need a lot of autonomy and real-time processing. That’s a big deal. It’s a big deal not only on the on-board processing, but add hard board processing, you’ll see a lot of that is included in the green lines here. That’s Battle Management. There’s a lot of activity in there and we need help with industry. We need a lot of algorithm development work to make sure that we can actually autonomously port so that we can port algorithms developed from the ground so that we can get those to run autonomously in space to be able to do data fusion and automatic target recognition, those kind of things.

On the Transport side, the big key issues there are, how can we be ensure that we can have very small encryption devices that fit in the timescale and the SWaP seed that we need to do this proliferation. That’s a big deal. How can we continue to push differences in our Navigation, so that we can fuse data together, come up with a Nav message and get that off to the field. Those are key areas of investment. And we’ll be continuing to push on the optical crosslinks on that technology. Those are all key things along the Transport capability roadmap.

As far as the Sensing roadmap for Tracking and Custody, primarily there we are looking at are there other missions that folks are fielding — can we use those data to be able to synergistically come up with a solution where we fuse those together. That’s why the areas where we’re looking for investment and for folks to team with us, as well as any kind of autonomy.

This is our product roadmap. Please, take this and study it to see if there are ways you can help. We also have a broad area announcement on the street that kind of talks about investment that we’re willing to make to buy down some of our largest technical risks. If you have concepts there that can buy down those risks, send us an executive summary and we’d love to open up that conversation. With that, we really appreciate your time and the opportunity to talk today about what Space Development Agency has done and our future plans and look forward to continuing to team with industry to make these a reality. Thank you.

Direct From SmallSat Symposium: Florence Tan, NASA’s Chief Technologist Small Spacecraft Coordination Group — A Market Brief, NASA’s Synopsis of SmallSat Science Missions

Florence Tan is the Chief Technologist (Acting), Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Chair, Small Spacecraft Coordination Group at NASA. She presented the following regarding the work of NASA within the smallsat community…

NASA is doing amazing science with smallsats. First, a little history. We are all aware of the Apollo missions to the moon in 1971. What is not so well known is that the Apollo 15 and 16 missions deployed smallsats at the command module as it left lunar orbit. Here (image below) you can see one of the satellites that flew. It carried three instruments: a magnetometer, a charged particle detector and an S-band transponder. It made a number of important measurements… plasma, particle and magnetic field of the Moon’s environment and mapped the lunar gravity field.

Traditionally, NASA uses legacy-class flight ship missions… think Hubble, Cassini or the Perseverance rover that’s landing in a few days on Mars. We use these missions to achieve our goals of extraordinary science and supporting explorations through innovative technology. There is a place for flight ship missions; however, we recognize the value and impact of smallsats, from cubesats to Esper-class spacecraft. The concepts we are able to use to perform targeted science to prove out new technologies and innovations and train and educate our future workforce.

To this end, NASA stood up the Small Spacecraft Coordination Group (SSCG), whose goal is to improve coordination among our mission directorates, to place more emphasis on the overarching, integrated, smallsat strategy to advance our agency’s objectives.

In August 2019, the SSCG released a NASA Small Spacecraft strategic plan. Our strategies are influenced by NASA’s Achieving Sciences Report Recommendations and adds guidance to those recommendations to account for the future capabilities and growth in launch systems and Esper class spacecraft.

In late 2018, SMD released a policy and established this policy, NASA STD-32. This policy enables rideshare or launch accommodation opportunities using an Esper-class ring as part of the launch service procured for an SMD (Science Mission Directorate) primary payload. In early 2020, during the Access to Space workshop, we announced the establishment of the Rideshare Office, headed by Aly Mendoza-Hill, to maximize science, exploration and technology returns by enabling accommodation opportunities for secondary payloads on SMD primary mission launches.

Shown above is NASA’s smallsat science mission fleet chart. Across the six divisions of SMD, we have funded 72 cubesat and smallsat missions and 57 studies to date. Currently, we have 40 small spacecraft missions, or 63 spacecraft, in implementation or formulation. The funding for smallsat missions and studies over 11 years is greater than $2 billion. Two-thirds of our missions are 6U or larger. We are shifting toward constellations, as well.

The next two charts are going to be a synopsis of some of our science missions. As our Associate Administrator for Science said, “These missions do big science but they are special because they come in small packages, which means you can launch them together and get more research for the price of a single launch.”

TROPICS, CYGNSS and PREFIRE are EO missions. CYGNSS is a cyclone, global navigation satellite system. It was launched in December of 2016 and is comprised of eight smallsats. CYGNSS measures the strength of GPS signals reflected by the Earth’s surface to divide the properties of the surface. In its four years of operation, CYGNSS has been able to make measurements of global oceans, surface winds such as tropical cyclones to help understand meteorological processes and improve numerical weather forecasts. Over land, CYGNSS has made measurements of flood inundation. CYGNSS also produces daily soil moisture data products and these are used in hydrological process studies and for disaster monitoring. Recently, CYGNSS was approved for another three years of operation.

TROPICS (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats). TROPICS is a constellation of six, 3U cubesats in three orbital planes and carries scanning microwave radiometers to measure temperature, humidity, precipitation and cloud properties and offers a combination of horizontal and temporal resolutions to measure the violent conditions and inner core conditions of tropical cyclones at a near global scale. This is a profound leap forward for detailed studies of high impact meteorological events.

Next is PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-Infrared Experiment). This experiment offers a new window to polar observation and polar climate predictions. It’s going to fly two, 6U cubesats and will systematically map the Earth’s far-infrared emissions spectrum in polar or near-polar orbit for the first time. Thanks to the investments we’ve made to ambient temperature detection and miniaturized optics, we are able to fly the thermal infrared spectrometer that weighs less than 3 kg, uses less than 5 watts of power and sits within a 3U form factor. PREFIRE will fly in two, distinct orbits, separated by a few hours, and able to quantify with spectral fingerprints of atmospheric and surface cloud and ice melt. We can use these observations to integrate them with models so that we are able to ensure these measurements toward the improvement in polar climate predictions.

NASA recently announced three, exciting, selections of smallsat missions for further concept studies. Pandora is a mission to study the atmosphere features of exoplanets in our solar neighborhood. StarBurst seeks to understand the nature of neutron star mergers with LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) is a facility dedicated to the detection of cosmic gravitational waves and the measurement of these waves for scientific research. It consists of two widely separated installations within the United States, operated in unison as a single observatory. And Aspera is a small telescope that will map the gas of galaxies near our own Milky Way so that we can understand the evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. Everyone of these missions will be addressing compelling astrophysics.

Around planetary science, we just launched last month a Q-PACE (CubeSat Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment) mission. We will be introducing particles in the low gravity of LEO to understand and look at the formation process of our own solar system and the genesis of planetary ring systems.

Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper, called LunaH-Map, is an exciting instrument that will launch on the Artemis I mission (September 2021) and will feature a miniaturized neutron spectrometer that will study and map hydrogen abundance within the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) of the Moon’s south pole. These PSRs may contain enough water to change our view of the formation and evolution of the Moon or may contain enough water to support human and robotic exploration of the solar system.

Then we have the SunRISE (Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment) mission, which will study the sun’s coronal mass ejections (CMEs). CMEs can accelerate particles that produce radio emissions and we’re interested in how solar particles are accelerated and released into interplanetary space and we are very interested in this from the fundamental point of view as well as the effect on space and on Earth and our space assets. SunRISE is a combination of new 6U cubesats operating as a radio interferometer to produce an aperture with a diameter of around 10 km. The idea is to take a picture of the CME that is erupting and we know where the space stuff is because the smallsats also pickup the GPS signals. We take the data and collect it and transmit it down to the ground for processing so we can see a picture of where these particles are accelerated.

Today, NASA is leveraging the capabilities of the commercial space industry for science and smallsats. NASA has a wider diversity of options for access to space. We have new capabilities that play an important role for launching large numbers of sallsats, including constellations, as well as global telecom and data services, buses for smallsats, and NASA has a contract for commercial data buys as well as rideshares to GEO. We are working with NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation group to provide comm requirements for our Near Earth Orbit assets in order to transition to one hundred percent commercial telecom service in the years to come.

The future is bright. We see a shift toward small, mini-sats for sustained, decadal-class observations. For this, there is a need for miniaturization of instrumentation, materials and hardware that can withstand environmental space, data assimilation and simulation tools. As our sensors mature, the data products from large and small missions will become indistinguishable. We will gain new insights from multi-instrument constellation data fusion and analytics. And we will require the tools to understand the data. We will have cooperative synergies among small and large missions and internal cooperation on key, community, science measurements. Commercial services such as comms, and ground station operations, could be used for our goals.

In turn, we must re-think how we look at reliable cost risks of small spacecraft, especially in constellations. We may not have the same risk requirements profile as with a large, multi-million dollar mission. We can take advantage of affordable and more frequent access to space that allows high replenishment rates of satellite fleets. The last 10 years have seen a flowering of the domestic and international space industry, the commercial utility of LEO in all sectors.

For the more than 30 years I have worked at NASA, I take great pride and delight to see the maturation of the American space sector. It is with great satisfaction that we can leverage the U.S. space industry’s innovative technologies and services for our science missions and take advantage of the kinds of scale offered by industries and tax payer dollars. I thank you for your time.

Direct From SmallSat Symposium, Sir Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Galactic, + Dan Hart, President + CEO, Virgin Orbit, Keynote Address

Chris Stott

Chris Stott, Executive Chairman, Mansat, was the moderator of this extremely interesting interview of Sir Richard Branson, the Founder of Virgin Galactic, and Dan Hart, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Orbit, on Day Three of the SmallSat Symposium.

Chris Stott (CS): Gentlemen, you are making the extraordinary look amazing. That launch was superb and that must have been quite a moment, I mean, that was the 17th of January, not quite a month ago, you hit all of the points on the curve. So, how did it go? What’s next for Virgin Orbit?

Dan Hart

Dan Hart (DH): It was an incredible day. It was picture perfect. We’ve now gone through the data review with and are still pinching ourselves. The orbit was perfect. Ten satellites in their place. We’re getting videos and pictures from excited students and researchers as they activate their spacecraft. It went better than anybody could have ever dreamed. Every part of the system came together.

Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson (RB): I’ve had quite a few tears in my eyes the last 12 months between Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit. I definitely teared up on this one. The team have worked unbelievably hard the last four years to get to here. What they were trying to achieve was not easy and we we’ll be able to launch on numerous 747s from different parts of the world. We want to be able to build rockets and ship out quickly to different parts of the world. We want them to be able to go in to the right orbit or any orbit anywhere in the world. They ticked all of the boxes and I couldn’t be happier.

CS: So, your timing on this was superb because there’s a lot of tough competition in the launch services industry right now. You’ve had a couple of competitors launch recently. You’ve been at this for a while. So, how do you see yourselves in this competitive environment?

RB: I think we’re operating a different proposition to most of the other people. We can take up more weight than in the size of the satellite and we’re going to be building rockets that are much bigger than the current rocket, as well. They’ll take up even more weight. There is an enormous demand for the kind of project we are doing, i.e., the launch from a 747 anywhere in the world, both from commercial people to put new satellites up. I think what makes us particularly unique is our capability for the U.S. Air Force or the British Air Force, the Canadian Air Force, French Air Force, all of whom have been encouraging and working with us over the last two to three years to give them an extreme deterrent capability so that if they were to lose satellites anywhere in the world, they can be replaced incredibly quickly. If we do this cleverly, what 747 can take those satellites up, they won’t know — we can convert enough 747s and it’s much more difficult for an enemy power to know planes than just one ground based launch which they can take out in a minutes notice. We’ve got quite a range of things that this company is capable of.

DH: If I can pipe in, I just want to shout out to the Virgin Orbit team. This is a team that… I respect any team that can take a rocket and can get to 17,000 mph or more. This is a team that came together and brought a new capability… I mean, this is the first time a liquid rocket flew from an airport under the wing of a 747 or any airplane and ended up in orbit. And so the team really advanced space technology, proved it operational and we have, as Richard said, unique capability, both from an affordability point of view and the economics of getting a rocket into 35,000 feet before it has to do any work and the flexibility, the resilience, and the deterrent that Richard mentioned. And the ability, you know, we have about 80 space agencies around the world — I think the amount of countries that have launched within their sovereign shores right now can probably be counted easily on two hands and so there’s an enormous desire and opportunity to democratize our ability to have humanity get to space.

RB: With COVID, it was not easy — everytime we were about to do something, one member got COVID so everybody had to climb down and then come back again and then somebody else got COVID, but somehow they got there, but it was, like every company in the world, it was a challenge and the team was no exception.

CS: If you can pull this off in regular time, that is extraordinary. To do this in these times of historic moment with COVID is astoundingly good and it speaks volumes to the people you have working with you. You have that ability to not just launch in the United States and I think you’ve got a launch coming up… at some point, you’re going to be the first launch in the United Kingdom. Is that correct?

DH: Yes, that’s exactly right, in Cornwall. We’ve been working with Cornwall for a couple of years now and the project is moving along well and we look forward to next year to doing our first launch at Cornwall Airport Newquay.

RB: Many happy memories of Cornwall, a beautiful part of Britain.

CS: You’ve recently started to expand what Virgin Orbit has been doing. You took a stake in a satellite communications company, Sky & Space Global. Could you please talk us through that?

DH: You know, launch is a cornerstone of, obviously, space access and the whole space ecosystem. Our ability to flex into adjacencies is a natural. Sky & Space Global is an initial step there. We really look forward to working and developing a system and other systems. We see an evolution for the company obviously through launch, through distributed launch, both for the national security community as well as the international community of Allies, and then there are a plethora of space adjacencies, whether its in other aspects of national security, or in the commercial turnkey kinds of systems like Sky & Space Global is going after.

CS: Is it just limited to satellite communications or is it a broader look at anything that goes into orbit with Virgin Orbit?

DH: We have a pretty expansive evolution of the company planned. We’re evaluating right now with this success there’s lots of possibilities and, frankly, we’re getting lots of queries.

RB: I think something I would like to encourage the company to do and is more than welcome to take this onboard is that there will be a lot of people who do approach the company with wonderful ideas to put satellites in space. It’s just that they can’t afford it. What we can also now start doing is helping them get their projects off the ground, maybe take a stake in the company, and get their satellites to orbit. We’re entrepreneurs through and through and that’s the kind of entrepreneurial thing that Virgin Orbit should be doing. If there are people out there that have great ideas, you know, put something in space but they can’t afford to do it, then we could maybe do it in terms of a stake in the company.

CS: Fascinating. I would imagine then that they would have to reach out to Dan?

DH (laughing): I think my phone is starting to ring now!

CS: Don’t put your email up, Sir Richard. What is this group you are building? How do you see all of the space companies working together? And where does space fit into the Virgin brand?

RB: Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit don’t fit together in a sort of too obvious a way, which is why we split the companies into two separate entities, one putting satellites into space and the other putting people into space. But they’re both incredibly important to the Virgin Group. Obviously they came along and saved the Virgin Group. I’m a great believer in diversification, so that, if something like SARS or COVID hits you, or 9-11 or whatever, you’re diversified enough to be able to help the companies that are in trouble and when COVID hit, we launched our Cruise line the day before COVID hit — that wasn’t a great idea — we had two airlines — that wasn’t a great idea — we had the biggest fitness chain outside America — that wasn’t a good idea — including South Africa — we had hotels around the world — that wasn’t a good idea — and so it goes on. So, the one shining light has been Galactic and Orbit and thank God we did diversify into space. I didn’t diversify into space thinking I am going to make lots of money out of space. I diversified into space because I love space, I love connecting people, I love the idea of giving people the opportunity to become astronauts who could never generally afford to become astronauts, I love creating things. I love my granddaughter who is two looking up at the sky. After Dan’s rocket went into space, and pointing up and saying Pappa’s rocket’s on the moon. Pappa’s rocket is on the moon. Anyway, there’s lots of reasons, but if it can help pay the bills to a varying degree, we are very, very grateful to space.

DH: I would also add that from the other side being in a space company that’s part of Richard’s creation of Virgin, there are some special elements — and Richard touched on some of them — you know, this feeling of purpose, that we’re in this to make a difference, and as well as the agility kind of thing that Richard expressed a little while ago for an entrepreneurial company, our sights are set high and we’re agile… it doesn’t take a lot of discussions and meetings when a good idea comes to say let’s go for it. Those are things that I’m continually reminded of through discussions with Sir Richard and the team that he has built at Virgin.

CS: Sir Richard and Dan, you both just talked about the importance of people. I’m an entrepreneur myself — I keep tabs —- and you have some great quotes on people. “Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the flow.” And that’s something we’ve always done at our company, ManSat, and its always because we followed your lead on that. Sir Richard, how do choose your teams? How do you choose your people?

RB: First of all you need somebody like Dan who genuinely cares about people, who cares about the cleaning lady or cleaning man as much as they care about their fellow directors, who look for the best in people, who praises and doesn’t criticize. If somebody messes up, doesn’t jump down their throats. When I was a kid, if I ever said anything ill of somebody, my parents would stand in front of the mirror for ten minutes and tell me how badly it reflected on myself. I think it’s that kind of approach is really important if you are running companies. The kind of people we take on are people who are great with people first and then we look for the other skills. It seems to work well at certain companies.

CS: Dan, you’ve just taken on a whole bunch of new people. You’ve demonstrated your great with people and teams and you can achieve your milestones but you are just taking on so many people, so what do you look for?

DH: Obviously you want to have some good level of skill but the positivity, the feeling of wanting to move forward and work together, is probably the most crucial part of pulling a team together, especially when you’re going to take on a hard job and working together, sometimes in stressful days, and the ability to laugh, the ability to shake off a setback and move forward, it is absolutely critical. And I think our company is a great mix of people who are new to the industry or in their first decade of work and then people who have been around for a few extra years like myself, and combining that and doing it well I think is absolutely key. The next group who are going to take us to planets and to different capabilities around the world are here and it i s really exciting to see them rising and making the system real.

RB: In the process of what you’re doing and there’s no fun in doing something unless people are going to be inspired by it and believe in it. A lot of our lives are spent at work and its critical that you don’t waste your life and say you’ve got to create something with real purpose.

CS: Sir Richard, is space the hardest thing you’ve ever done?

RB: Yes. But then again, if you’d have asked me the same question 36 years ago when we had one, second-hand, 747 flying between London and New York with British Airways with 300 planes I suspect I would have said yes, yes to Virgin Atlantic. We have set ourselves some quite big challenges and that’s made it tremendous fun, trying to overcome those challenges and trying to deal with some much bigger competitors.

CS: Dan, you spent 34 years at Boeing, one of the largest aerospace corporations in human history, and you left and joined a startup?

DH: I started when I was 12 (laughing). It was really a great transition and, honestly, I had a wonderful career with Boeing and McDonnell Douglas that was part of that in the early years. I got to do incredible things there, whether it was space labs or missile defense, or satellites, Delta rockets, but when I got the call, there’s an opportunity to work with Virgin and Sir Richard and do something new for space launch, there was no turning that down. It’s been a great learning experience, honestly, on different ways, different cultures, different ways to operate, the speed of which I learned up front. In my old job, sometimes you would have a number of meetings to make a decision. I think the first time I had a big decision and I asked Richard, he looked at me and said, you’re doing that, aren’t you?

CS: The power of delegation. We’ve got about three minutes and I have three very quick questions. Sir Richard, you look prescient when you did a SPAC… you were the first in the space industry to do a SPAC back in October of 2019. Now everyone’s talking about them. What led you down that path to be the first to go do a SPAC for space?

RB: I’m impatient.The SPAC gets through all of the rigamarole of public companies. Yes, I thought, that’s great, let’s do it.

CS: Well, it worked, that’s great. Gentlemen, last question… before a launch, before something big is about to happen, how do you center yourself? What is your moment of Zen? How do you, kind of, stay focused?

RB: I was lucky enough to have five grandkids running around me so think that kept me distracted, which is what I think I needed. Poor Dan didn’t have that chance. He was out there on the firing line.

DH: Well, I mean, for me there was a schedule of things I needed to do and people I needed to interact with, whether it was with the flight line with the launch team, greeting the flight crew as they came or interacting with the mission control folks, so luckily I had things to do. I will say I’ve never before done a launch where I was in a room by myself, which is where I ended up. We were distributed because of COVID and I’ve never experienced anything like that. It was very interesting sitting by myself, listening to the countdown, and interacting with the team. I sometimes thought the room should have been padded because of the intensity of the situation. That’s how we interacted. We were virtual and it worked, but none of those normal queues that you usually get with a countdown, you’re nodding at each other, having little sidebar discussions, none of that. It was all business.

CS: Virtual high fives… gentlemen, what advice do you have for entrepreneurs in the space industry?

RB (laughing): Good luck! Dream big and if you come up with an extraordinary idea, there will be people like myself or Dan who will most likely help turn it into reality. There’s so many extraordinary breakthroughs taking place these days and we’re looking to the next one and our doors are open.

DH: I would just say lock on to that dream, that purpose, know that it’s going to take time and you’re going to have great success and you’re going to have failures along the way and be ready for them. Use both success and failures as lessons to propel you forward.

RB: You’ll be young when you start and you’ll be old when you finish (laughing).

CS: Sir Richard, you’ve always said your dreams don’t scare you, they’re too small. And you’ve got a big event coming up with Virgin Galactic this week. What’s next for Virgin Galactic?

RB: Well, we have another milestone hopefully in Virgin Galactic’s history on Valentine’s Day. I’m delighted to say we’ve managed to get a thousand messages, love messages, from people who have been following Galactic on board and I just got the message that they managed to pack a thousand in and we’ll be on the edge of the seat watching this test flight go up — I mean, every test flight is there to try and see if it takes everything up and then we’ll have one more test flight for this and then I’m ready, fit and healthy and got my passport and waiting, waiting to go up.

CS: Sir Richard and Dan Hart, thanks so much for everything you do. And with that, thank you your participating in this year’s SmallSat Symposium.

Lockheed Martin Contracts ABL Space Systems’ Rocket + Launch Services For UK Liftoff In 2022

Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has contracted ABL Space Systems, of El Segundo, California, to supply a rocket and associated launch services for the company’s first, UK, vertical satellite launch.

The project, known as UK Pathfinder Launch, is planned to be the first ever, vertical, smallsat launch from Scotland in 2022. This will also be the first UK commercial launch for U.S.-based ABL Space Systems’ new RS1 rocket. ABL Space Systems’ flexible, integrated GSO launch system, and RS1 rocket, allows for a rapid and cost-effective deployment with outstanding launch performance.

The Shetland launch site at Lamba Ness on the island of Unst. ©Shetland Space Centre Ltd.

Lockheed Martin’s UK Pathfinder Launch supports the UK Space Agency’s commercial spaceflight program – Launch UK. In October, the UK Space Agency confirmed Lockheed Martin’s plans to move its programme to the Shetland Space Centre and in January, planning proposals were submitted for the space launch facility in Unst.

The addition of ABL Space Systems as a partner completes Lockheed Martin’s UK Pathfinder Launch programme team. On launch day, ABL Space Systems’ RS1 rocket will lift off from Shetland Space Centre, in Unst, Shetland, which is the UK’s most northerly island. Once in orbit, the rocket will release a small launch orbital maneuvering vehicle, an agile platform built by MOOG, in Reading, UK, which can carry and deploy up to six 6U CubeSats, optimising orbital placement and timing for each small satellite’s respective missions. 

To demonstrate the full value of this new UK space transportation capability, two of the cubesats deployed will be Lockheed Martin’s own technology demonstration spacecraft.

In 2019, ABL Space Systems announced that it had received a strategic investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures to advance the launch provider’s development and test programme.

Nik Smith, Regional Director, Lockheed Martin Space, said, “We are absolutely committed to the success of this programme and the world class capability that ABL Space Systems brings will allow us to build on our long-standing partnership with the UK and strengthen the growth of the UK space sector, aligned to the UK Government’s prosperity and industrial strategy.”

“ABL Space Systems is proud to partner with Lockheed Martin on the UK Pathfinder Launch Program,” said Harry O’Hanley, Co-Founder and CEO of ABL Space Systems. “Our team was founded to deliver new launch capabilities, on-demand. We’re thrilled at the opportunity bring our system to Shetland’s launch site and execute this ground-breaking mission with our partners.”

Ian Annett, Deputy CEO, UK Space Agency said, “We want the UK to be the first in Europe to launch small satellites into orbit, attracting innovative businesses from all over the world, accelerating the development of new technologies and creating hundreds of high-skilled jobs across the whole of the UK. Lockheed Martin’s selection of ABL Space Systems for their UK Pathfinder launch brings us one step closer to realising this ambition – putting the UK firmly on the map as Europe’s leading small satellite launch destination. In this challenging time, it’s more important than ever that we support technologies that will help create jobs and economic growth, enabling people and businesses across the country to benefit from the commercial opportunities offered by the UK’s growing space sector and the many firms throughout its supply chain.”

GHOSt Constellation Deployment Plans Finalized By Orbital Sidekick

Orbital Sidekick (OSK) has finalized plans to deploy their Global Hyperspectral Observation Satellite constellation, known as GHOSt. The hyperspectral imaging (HSI) constellation consists of six, 100 kg, ESPA class satellites designed and manufactured by Astro Digital, with Maverick Space Systems providing mission integration and management services for the launches on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. The custom hyperspectral imaging payload is provided by OSK.

GHOSt leverages OSK’s previous experience collecting and analyzing hyperspectral data with its HEIST mission on the International Space Station in 2019. The custom payload will produce the highest resolution commercial hyperspectral imagery launched to-date with a GSD of approximately 8 meters. The payload will be integrated into Astro Digital’s Corvus-XL satellite platform and will take advantage of its industry leading Ka-band data downlink capability.

Maverick Space Systems will provide mission integration hardware and services to launch GHOSt on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 starting in December 2021 and continuing into 2022.

GHOSt will capture more than 400 spectral bands in the visible to shortwave infrared range of 400 – 2500 nm to feed OSK’s Spectral Intelligence Global Monitoring Application (SIGMATM) platform.

Artistic rendition of the GHOSt constellation on-orbit.
Pete Friedhoff,

“We’re excited to partner with Astro Digital and Maverick Space for this initial constellation. Both companies bring a high degree of agility with proven execution to our mission, allowing OSK to focus on the payload and extracting information from our unique hyperspectral data,” said Pete Friedhoff, Director of Space Systems for Orbital Sidekick.

Chris Biddy

“Persistent, hyperspectral imaging is a critical new capability in remote sensing,” said Chris Biddy, Co-founder and CEO of Astro Digital. “We are very pleased to be supporting Orbital Sidekick’s mission with our proven satellite technology and capabilities.”

“Taking advantage of frequent low-cost launch opportunities is critical to achieve Orbital Sidekick’s constellation. We are excited to partner with them and further reduce their per-satellite launch costs by aggregating two GHOSt satellites per ESPA port,” said Roland Coelho, CEO of Maverick Space.

SpaceX Starlinks Head For Orbit Aboard A Successful Falcon 9 Launch

SpaceX has successfuly launched 60 Starlink satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The SpaceX launch operations center preparing for the Falcon 9 liftoff. Image is courtesy of the SpaceX live webcast of the launch.

The Falcon 9 first stage rocket booster supporting this mission previously flew on four missions: the launches of GPS III Space Vehicle 03 and Turksat 5A and two Starlink missions.

Following stage separation, SpaceX landed the Falcon 9’s first stage on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship which was located in the Atlantic Ocean (image below).

One half of Falcon 9’s fairing previously flew on the SAOCOM-1B mission, and the other previously flew in support of the GPS III Space Vehicle 03 mission.

UPDATE 2: SpaceX Starship SN9 Sent Forth… Return Landing Is A RUD

On Tuesday, February 2, Starship serial number 9 (SN9) completed SpaceX’s second high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype from the SpaceX site in Cameron County, Texas.

Similar to the high-altitude flight test of Starship serial number 8 (SN8), SN9 was powered through ascent by three Raptor engines, each shutting down in sequence prior to the vehicle reaching apogee – approximately 10 kilometers in altitude.

SN9 successfully performed a propellant transition to the internal header tanks, which hold landing propellant, before re-orienting itself for re-entry and a controlled aerodynamic descent.

The Starship prototype descended under active aerodynamic control, accomplished by independent movement of two forward and two aft flaps on the vehicle. All four flaps are actuated by an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enable precise landing at the intended location.

During the landing flip maneuver, one of the Raptor engines did not relight and caused SN9 to land at high speed and experience a RUD (that’s what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk calls a “rapid unscheduled disassembly).

These test flights are all about improving the understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration, interplanetary flights and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.

Watch the entire SN9 launch video at this direct link…

Original news story…

As early as, now, Tuesday, February 2, the SpaceX team will attempt a high-altitude flight test of Starship serial number 9 (SN9) – the second high-altitude suborbital flight test of a Starship prototype from the company’s launch site in Cameron County, Texas.

Similar to the high-altitude flight test of Starship serial number 8 (SN8), SN9 will be powered through ascent by three Raptor engines, each shutting down in sequence prior to the vehicle reaching apogee – approximately 10 km in altitude. SN9 will perform a propellant transition to the internal header tanks, which hold landing propellant, before reorienting itself for reentry and a controlled aerodynamic descent.

The Starship prototype will descend under active aerodynamic control, accomplished by independent movement of two forward and two aft flaps on the vehicle. All four flaps are actuated by an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enable precise landing at the intended location. SN9’s Raptor engines will then reignite as the vehicle attempts a landing flip maneuver immediately before touching down on the landing pad adjacent to the launch mount.

A controlled aerodynamic descent with body flaps and vertical landing capability, combined with in-space refilling, are critical to landing Starship at destinations across the solar system where prepared surfaces or runways do not exist, and returning to Earth. This capability will enable a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration, interplanetary flights and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.

There will be a live feed of the flight test available that will start a few minutes prior to liftoff. Given the dynamic schedule of development testing, stay tuned to the company’s social media channels for updates as all get ready for SpaceX’s second high-altitude flight test of Starship.

Astra + Holicity Merge + Form Publicly-Traded Entity

Astra and Holicity Inc. (NASDAQ: HOL) (“Holicity”) have announced a definitive business combination agreement that will result in Astra becoming a publicly-traded company.

This transaction reflects an implied pro forma enterprise value for Astra of approximately $2.1 billion. Upon closing, the transaction is expected to provide up to $500 million in cash proceeds, including up to $300 million of cash held in the trust account of Holicity and an upsized $200 million PIPE led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.

In December of 2020, Astra joined a small group of companies that have made it to space. With more than 50 launches in manifest across more than 10 private and public customers, including NASA and DoD, Astra has booked more than $150 million of contracted launch revenue. Astra will begin delivering customer payloads this summer and begin monthly launches by the end of this year.

Following the closing of the transaction, the combined company will continue to be led by Founder and CEO, Chris Kemp and the expectation is that Craig McCaw will join Astra’s board of directors.

The proposed transaction, which is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2021, has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both Astra and Holicity and remains subject to approval by Holicity’s stockholders. Upon the closing of the transaction, the combined company will be named Astra and will be listed on NASDAQ under the symbol “ASTR.”

“This transaction takes us a step closer to our mission of improving life on Earth from space by fully funding our plan to provide daily access to low Earth orbit from anywhere on the planet,” said Chris Kemp, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Astra.

“I have long believed space provides an unmatched opportunity to benefit and enrich society,” said Craig McCaw, Chairman, and CEO of Holicity. “Astra’s space platform will further improve our communications, help us protect our planet, and unleash entrepreneurs to launch a new generation of services to enhance our lives.”

UPDATE 1: A Swarm Smile + UK Space Policy Maneuvering + Nilesat’s Newbie

In December of 2018, Swarm Technologies was hit with a $900,000 fine by the FCC for an unlawful and unauthorized launch of four tiny, sandwich-sized satellites.

Swarm IoT Smallsat

Swarm might now be having a winning smile on its face as its network of Internet of Things (IoT) global coverage with 72 commercial satellites is already providing 100 percent global coverage. Swarm stated the firm will have extended its orbital fleet to a total of 150 satellites by the end of this year.

Swarm has integrated user-terminals from Semtech for its connectivity solutions which enables two-way communications with its LEO satellites.

The Semtech modems communicate with the satellites enabling reliable data transfer anywhere on Earth, at all times, said a joint release from Swarm and Semtech.

“Because Semtech’s LoRa technology is well suited for long-distance, low power, and wide-area coverage applications, it has opened up new Internet of Things (IoT) use cases for Swarm in areas such as logistics, agriculture, connected cars, and energy,” said Ben Longmier, CTO and Co-Founder of Swarm. “We are thrilled to collaborate with Semtech by utilizing LoRa to help us provide affordable global connectivity for IoT devices at an unprecedented scale.”

“Semtech and Swarm are working jointly to pursue commercial IoT applications that require less data-intensive communications and fill in the gaps of the existing satellite market,” said Marc Pegulu, Vice President of IoT Product Marketing for Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group. “The combination of our technologies helps provide reliable and affordable connectivity that keep sensors, equipment, and assets connected across land and sea.”

Also of note is that the UK government has changed how it looks after its embryonic space activity. The government has decided to remove responsibility for the development of rocket sites, space policy and strategy from the UK Space Agency and to bring the controls and supervision into its Department for Business.

The move may be unconnected, however, the Space Agency’s CEO Graham Turnock announced on January 13th that he would be stepping down after four years at the Agency. The Agency employs some 200 staff and enjoys a budget of £577 million annually. Part of the restructuring is supervision of the UK’s rocket launching, which is being handed over to the Civil Aviation Authority.

Turnock’s departure – no replacement has yet been announced – leaves a number of key questions outstanding for the new Secretary of State at the Dept. for Business, Kwasi Kwarteng, not least the UK’s stake and development of OneWeb (with India’s Bharti) as well as how the UK will create its own rival system to Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system.

Then there’s Nilesat, whose latest commercial geostationary satellite, Nilesat 301, will be launched by SpaceX next year.

Nilesat 301 is being built by Thales Alenia Space and follows on from a long relationship with Arab satellite operators. The very first Arabsat (Arabsat-1A) was built by Alcatel Alenia in 1985 which was eventually absorbed by Thales Alenia.

Artistic rendition of the Nilesat 301 satellite. Image is courtesy of Thales Alenia Space.

Nilesat 301 is being built at Thales Alenia’s facility at Mandelieu, near Cannes on the Cote d’Azur, and will be the latest Spacebus 4000-B2 version. Nilesat 201 was also a Spacebus 4000-B2 craft and launched in 2010.

The new Nilesat 301 satellite will carry Ku- and Ka-band transponders.

World’s First, All-Civilian Mission to Space = New Era of Commercial Space Exploration

Plans for the world’s first all-civilian mission to space have been announced from SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California— the mission is being targeted for the fourth quarter of this year and will be commanded by Jared Isaacman, the 37-year-old Founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) and an accomplished pilot.

Named Inspiration4 in recognition of the four-person crew’s mission to inspire support for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® and send a humanitarian message of possibility, the journey represents a new era for human spaceflight and exploration. Isaacman is donating the three mission seats alongside him to crew members who will be selected to represent the mission pillars of leadership, hope, generosity and prosperity.

Jared Isaacman

Said Jared Isaacman, “Inspiration4 is the realization of a lifelong dream and a step towards a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars. I appreciate the tremendous responsibility that comes with commanding this mission and I want to use this historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to tackle childhood cancer here on Earth. This announcement is the first step of a very exciting journey. In the lead-up to launch, we’ll share new ways to support and follow our mission preparation and execution with a focus on inspiring and helping others.”

Isaacman and the Inspiration4 crew will undergo commercial astronaut training by SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, including a specific focus on orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity, zero gravity, and other forms of stress testing. They will receive emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, as well as partial- and full-mission simulations.

SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

The mission will launch from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and will be carefully monitored at every step by SpaceX mission control as the spacecraft orbits the planet every 90 minutes along a customized flight path. Upon conclusion of the multi-day journey, Dragon will reenter Earth’s atmosphere for a soft water landing off the coast of Florida.

Isaacman has given St. Jude two seats on the Inspiration4 mission. The first seat is reserved for a St. Jude ambassador with direct ties to the mission who exemplifies the pillar of Hope as well as the courageous vision upon which St. Jude was founded – compassion, unity, equality and inclusion. The second seat will represent the mission pillar of Generosity. During the month of February, members of the public can enter for a chance to join the flight to space and support the lifesaving mission of St. Jude.

Isaacman has committed to give $100 million to St. Jude and is inviting everyone to join him in attempting to raise upwards of $200 million or more in support of St. Jude’s multi-billion dollar expansion aimed to accelerate research advancements and save more children worldwide.

Isaacman will collaborate with Shift4 Payments to offer the fourth and final crew seat representing the prosperity mission pillar to a deserving entrepreneur who uses the new Shift4Shop eCommerce platform, which empowers entrepreneurs to build and grow successful eCommerce businesses online. Current and new Shift4Shop customers will have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to enter an online competition showcasing them and their business. The competition will be conducted from February 1-28, 2021 and the winner will be selected by a panel of independent judges.

Shift4 Payments is providing marketing support for the mission and will leverage one of the biggest popular culture events of the year, Super Bowl LV this Sunday, to dramatically introduce the mission and its purpose to the public. A 30-second spot will air during the first quarter of the Big Game and invite all viewers to support and be part of this historic journey through the St. Jude and Shift4Shop programs.

He will also offer additional support to the St. Jude fundraising effort in the form of other prizes, including flights in a military jet and flight gear. An accomplished pilot rated to fly commercial and military aircraft, Isaacman holds several world records including a Speed-Around-The-World flight to raise money and awareness for the Make-a-Wish Foundation. He has flown in over 100 airshows as part of the Black Diamond Jet Team, dedicating every performance to charitable causes.

In 2011, Isaacman co-founded what would become the world’s largest private air force, Draken International, to train pilots for the United States Armed Forces.

“The same year St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital broke boundaries by opening its doors, the first American orbited the Earth in 1962,” said Richard C. Shadyac Jr., President and CEO of ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude. “From the beginning, St. Jude has been at the forefront of innovation and inclusion, leading in cancer research, care and treatment for some of the world’s sickest children regardless of race, ethnicity, beliefs or a family’s ability to pay. This partnership brings two missions together to create one incredible moment in time that will make an impact for years to come on the global effort to cure childhood cancer.”

To learn more about Inspiration4, how to support and potentially join this historic journey to space and the specific conditions of the promotions, visit www.Inspiration4.com and follow the mission on social media on Twitter (@inspiration4x), Facebook (@inspiration4mission), Instagram (@inspiration4) and YouTube (@Inspiration4) to receive the latest news on mission training and preparation. Individuals who are interested in learning how to enter for an opportunity to win one of the two seats being offered should visit inspiration4.com and review the Official Rules for the applicable promotion.