SatNews

SmallSat Symposium Updates

Building a Toolbox for National Security

By Chris Forrester

Moderator: Preston Dunlap, CEO, Arkenstone Ventures asked panelists which orbit they favoured from the national security demand, and the importance of open standards and supply chain challenges. The panel, at the Smallsat Symposium in Mountain View reviewed the changes in warfare, the use of drones, and the adoption of security in these latest developments.

Karl Fuchs, SVP of Technology, iDirect Government, stated that neither LEO nor GEO was dead.  “Resiliency is hugely important and the risk of losing an orbit from the national security point of view would not go away. Today, clients want a full solution in multi-orbit, with computers and radios and where at the functional level they can handle inter-operability for a micro-vertical integration.”

Assi Friedman, CTO, Innoflight, felt that LEO would remain important but non-LEO would stay relevant in order to provide a full set of solutions. “We work with multiple parties, using different vendors and use the same technology in LEO, MEO and GEO. Encryption and security is a major concern, and latency cannot be ignored. Go back a few years and all anyone worried about was space-to-ground communication. Now it is link-to-link before coming to ground.”

Jesper Noer, VP Commercial, Gatehouse Satcom told delegates that LEO was far from dead, and its latency was super-valuable. He praised Starlink for doing a great job – albeit capital intense – but where vertical integration worked. “In general, however, we see an open standards approach and which permits a horizontal integration and is very cost-effective and we see this being attractive to the U.S. Dept of Defense. He said as a foreign (Danish) supplier to the U.S. he needed local partners but he predicted that the Ukraine examples of using very cheap drones to take out armaments costing millions and would translate to other markets and used in defense markets.”

Christian Keil, VP, Astranis told delegates about their recent 4-satellite launch (on a SpaceX rocket) of their satellites. He argued that the more he could bring development in house then the faster it could be.  “We can invest in suitable machinery and cut metal, and then not depend on suppliers where delays are inevitable. Some supply chains are in other parts of the world with all the risks that entails. There is no war taking place under our roof!  With more control you can move faster, and be cheaper.”

The new Administration is opening up space funding

By Chris Forrester

The Space Race for Capital session was a crowded and well attended panel at the SmallSat Symposium on February 5 at Mountain View. Brought together by the huge business advice consultancy Moss Adams, and moderated by partner Corey Preugschat, delegates wanted to know what the trends were in terms of fundraising and financing. 

Meagan Crawford, Founder & Managing Partner, SpaceFund (and owner of spacefund.com site), explained that valuations came back into line in 2024 and more realistic than the crazy period – over-valued – of 2021-2022. Greater realism sometimes means a lower valuation, and trust the Venture Capitalist to give you hopefully realistic advice.  Cash flow, in my experience is crucially important. It can be difficult and very damaging when a contract is held up meaning the cash doesn’t flow, despite an order being in place. I’d hope that the new Administration addresses this. It is also worth stressing that the world’s biggest funder in space is the U.S. government.

She suggested that the biggest opportunities were not in the launch industry. It is no longer ideal.  

Noel Rimalovski, MD, GH Partners explained that some Venture Capital funds were often focussed just on the next ‘Facebook’ and not necessarily looking at Space. Space is capital intensive and investors prefer not to have to mark values down when a project comes back looking for more funding.  Rimalovski also endorsed the view that the new Administration would be helpful with cash supporting U.S.-based activity. Defense and intelligence are also in favour and attractive to government. But always remember that you have to have your financial house in order. Start getting audits regularly, and be prepared for quarterly announcements. 

Greg Smirin, President, Muon Space. They raised $56 million in a Series B round. The challenges, he said, were in explaining to potential investors what space and for Muon Space what it was all about. “We were helped by signing just over $100 million in fresh contracts. What we have found subsequently is that valuations have improved and there’s a greater understanding (of Space).”

Christopher Thein, CEO, EOI Space said he was in the middle of a Round B funding. “It is fair to say that sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before finding your prince. If I was an investor, I would be very wary of any proposal that was pitched against SpaceX. By and large there’s a 30-50% premium for AI-focused companies.”

Ari Juster, COO, Starfish Space, managed to raise almost $30 million in 2024 to take the total to $50 million raised. It was the 4th ‘real round’ of cash-raising but he said he found that lead times had expanded and applicants needed to take this on board when embarking on discussions. There were also many factors in the decision making that might be well outside the influence of investor and recipient. 

400 missions to the Moon by 2045

By Chris Forrester

Clive Oates, Head of Region U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand for Surrey Satellite Tech. (SSTL). Mr Oates gave delegates a detailed report on the challenges of creating Lunar communications. He said the past decade had spurred considerable interest in global interest in returning to the Moon. There were reduced barriers to entry, launch costs had fallen and there are multiple commercial entities looking at the emerging Lunar economy, and an economy said to be worth hundreds of billions ($170bn to 2040).

SSTL expected a steady flow of lander missions by about 2030, and a steady presence on the Moon around 2036. Detection of water and ice in the Poles will be of key interest, as well as physical examination of the Moon’s surface. 

Mr Oates went back to the historical Apollo missions, and where communications ranged from simple Morse Code up to TV signals. He explained that SSTL anticipated up to some 400 Lunar missions over the next 20 years. They will need more sophisticated communications.  

SSTL is building Lunar Pathfinder in conjunction with ESA and NASA. It solves the line-of-sight challenge. The mission will carry several hosted payloads. Lunar Pathfinder is scheduled for launch in December 2025.

The frontiers of commercial space are growing, the Lunar economy is increasing, and industry is reducing barriers to return to the Moon.

Using AI, but avoiding the ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’ dilemma.

By Chris Forrester

Cloud services and data processing and its analysis are key ingredients for operators. A dedicated session at the SmallSat Symposium on February 4, and moderated by Dr. Eric Anderson (President, And One Technologies), examined the challenges and Dr. Anderson asked his panel to explain how their business was addressing and helping overcome their client’s problems. 

Dr. Lucy Hoag, CEO at Violet Labs, a B-2-B company, told delegates that one of her major problems was handling legacy, and even more modern software equipment, used in the designing, building and testing of satellites. “Typically, they do not talk to each other and using Cloud-based software tools present problems for us because of ITAR rules. It has meant frustration for many clients. I can give you plenty of examples, but first one must overcome scepticism from some engineers who tend not to believe that we can, with our software, eliminate drudgery. We have found that we can automate many legacy tasks and really save a huge amount of time and frustration.”

Dr. Hoag used Microsoft Copilot as an AI aid but she cautioned that one had to be aware of the risks of the usual ‘garbage in, garbage out’ problems.  “We needed to be really thoughtful as to how we use the software.”

Alan Campbell, Principal Space Products Solutions Architect at AWS. “I am in the aerospace and satellite division and what we are trying to do is simply to find solutions for our clients’ problems. For example, one strange request last year was to provide an answer for a customer who wanted to forecast demand for satellite bandwidth capacity for aviation and maritime. The model we used was the one which dos a similar forecast for supplying supermarkets with milk on their retail shelves. Some of the variables had to be modified but it was the same model, and it worked very well. We are also beginning to see plenty of what one might describe as ‘unglamorous’ uses of AI. For example, handling documents or notifications of a situation. One solution helps a customer and his clients who are rural farmers in Ghana and they can ask a chatbot, for example, what might be the best use of land for their specific farm?” 

Tushar Prabhakar, COO/Co-founder, Orbital Sidekick explained that their core business was within the oil and gas industry and in particular pipelines. “The way the pipelines are monitored now is with aircraft or drones as well as just driving along the lines. Few use sensors although that is beginning to change. We needed to launch our own satellites to better understand problems on the ground and use the Cloud from a security perspective. We had to build our own analytics to handle all this. We provide clients with a precise latitude and longitude of the problem. However, I have to admit that we have had to create many of the aspects ourselves, and often getting software engineers, aerospace and PhD folks to talk to one another was like pulling teeth! “

Dan Freyer, Director, Satellite Industry at Capgemini Engineering, said he worked with very skilled engineers with experiences in Cloud activity. “What we can do is bring different experiences together to provide a solution.” He explained that they help telcos and gave as an example how Verizon – although not his customer in this case – used AI to optimise their plant and in the process saved $100 million a year as a result. “Customers are asking us to give them blueprints to help them achieve their goals.”

Getting into space: The decision mix

By Chris Forrester

Silvano Payne, producer of the SmallSat Symposium told delegates that his company was tracking some 145 companies which were trying to build and launch new rockets. Moderator Curt Blake, Senior of Counsel at Wilson Sonsini, led the panel of experts. He asked his panel to differentiate what they were trying to do when set against the benchmark – which is SpaceX, and its domination of the launch market.

Brian Rogers, VP/Global Launch Services, Rocket Lab, answered that its Electron rocket and the upcoming Neutron medium-lift variant which will be capable of handling 13,000 kgs to LEO, and capture a slice of the market. “Our market entry strategy is to be less expensive than a Falcon 9. Our aim is not to initially focus on Rideshare-type missions but to handle ‘all of the above’ tasks which the market is seeking.”

Mr Rogers said that, for his customers, price was important but so was speed to launch. “If they can get their mission launched speedily then revenues will start flowing.”

Dr. Robert Sproles, CEO, Exolaunch said that they are also looking for a growing slice of the launch market and while they initially focussed on commercial clients they were now seeing government tasks on the table. “We see smaller start-ups getting bigger, and some larger clients also coming down in size with their needs. This includes CubeSats and MicroSats. There’s also a revitalisation in the GEO market where clients are looking for smaller satellites. We see the 200-700 kgs as our ‘sweet spot’ and not just in LEO but in GEO and even Lunar tasks.”  He said that launch schedules would always be important but so was price. 

Stella Guillen, CCO, Isar Aerospace SE, said her client list was split with some 80% looking after commercial clients and with a growing government segment. “Recently, there has been a lot of focus on defence and rapid response. All of our contracts except one are for multiple launch tasks and where the client is looking to lock in launch capacity because of the huge demand. We have contracts on the books that run to 2030 and 2032.”

She added that while price and launch schedule were obviously important, so was flexibility for clients.  “These terms can also be translated into dollar amounts in some cases.”  Having two launch sites (Polar and Equatorial) helps in that scheduling mix. Some of our Rideshare clients have ended up switching to more dedicated missions, so flexibility is very useful.

Germany-based Isar Aerospace is manufacturing its two-stage vehicles in-house and targeting small to medium-sized satellites. It has won business from ESA and investment from NATO.

Pablo Gallego, SVP, Sales & Customers, PLD Space. Alicante (Spain)-based PLD Space is developing three variants, Miura 1 for sub-orbital missions and Miura 5 for orbital launch with payloads up to 900 kgs into LEO. Them Miura NEXT is for a partially reusable version. They have agreements in place from French Space Agency (CNES) for use of their rockets from French Guiana. 

Dr. Marino Fragnito, CCO & Launch Services Director at Avio, which is an Italy-based business but with staff also in France and French Guiana for its Vega rocket family. It has launch contracts in place with ESA and is planning on 6 launches annually for its Vega C version.  Dr. Fragnito said Avio is a mid-sized launcher business.  “Our biggest problem at the moment is a limitation in terms of actual launches so we have to select the clients to work with and we have a very full backlog up to 2028. This means, unfortunately, we have less and less space for CubeSats and MicroSats simply because of launch demand from European institutions. Those European institutions make up about 90% of our schedule, but we are also seeing demand from international customers.”

Raising cash should be easier in 2025

By Chris Forrester

More than one panelist during the February 4 opening day of the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View has talked about the need to raise cash. The topic was the prime focus of a session which looked specifically at the state of the funding market for early round endeavours. Steve Kaufman, a partner at Hogan Lovells moderated the session which included experts with hard-earned experience of handling the “money” question.

Kaufmann joked that any rumor that cash would be handed out at the end of the session was wholly false! Nevertheless, the panelists delivered solid advice for delegates. Kaufman told delegates that 2024, by and large, had been a good year and asked his panel how they saw 2025.

The panel’s credentials were impressive. Lewis Jones, VP at investment firm Seraphim Space, explained that they were investors in satellites, rockets and space-related applications. “We are based in the UK but one-third of our interests are in the U.S., and another third in the rest of the world. A year ago, he reminded delegates, all was doom and gloom, but the market recovered pretty well with many new businesses being founded. We saw early stage (funding) becoming pretty resilient although growth stage was fairly stagnant. We see 2025 as giving us a lot of hope with potential IPO markets returning. People are getting used to space, and defense.” 

Dr. Timur Davis, Investment Director at Munich Re Ventures which is a Venture Capital firm based in Silicon Valley and has $1.2 billion under management. They have already made a handful of space-related investments. “Space, in our view, did very well last year. What’s been slow is on the exit side. We saw Lockheed acquire Terran Orbital but we are hopeful that 2025 will see more activity and the signs from the new Administration look pretty positive.  One area to be aware of is the pure defense technology. I have been involved in this business for some 6 years and through most of that time the focus has been purely on commercial activity. That’s changing. We first saw dual use emerging, with commercial and government as clients. Now we are seeing start-ups focus only on government including defense and security and we are seeing investor funds looking at those sorts of deals.”

Dr. Xiaoming Yin, senior investment manager at Lockheed Martin Ventures and a $400 million fund and about one-quarter of Lockheed Martin’s portfolio is directly into space-related activity. Dr. Yin said that while she agreed that very early funding was being found, up to ‘A’ rounds of cash-raising. But moving beyond – and including even ‘A’ rounds – were proving much more difficult to attract outside investors. 

Raphael Roettgen, Founding Partner at E2MC which is a wholly space-focused Venture Capital fund and involved in very early cash-raising one element of the fund. “Since the (US) election we have seen interest growing. The Iron Dome proposal from government is one aspect. This will certainly mean tens of billions in investment and perhaps hundreds of billions. There are so many things that can be done in space: resource mining, manufacturing, so my question is why don’t we have a Stargate for space?”

Michael Brown, Partner at law firm Fenwick and advises on structuring, M&A and financing and admitted that for companies to jump from ‘A’ round to ‘C’ round in their cash-raising was extremely hard last year. “I am seeing much more interest now. There’s also interest in the merging of space, defence and ‘deep-tech’ and also interest from the multi-stage venture capitalists many of which have billions of dollars under management. I really think 2025 will be better.”

Multi-orbit, multi-frequency and from Gigabit to Terabit

By Chris Forrester

Ground Systems are a market that’s worth $145 billion (according to BryceTech) was examined in detail by session moderator Prof. Andy Kwas, NG Fellow at Northrop Grumman, and delegates to the SmallSat Symposium at Mountain View on February 4.  Kwas told delegates how the past few years had seen huge advancements in small satellites, in terms of size, functionality and ability. But he asked his panel whether Ground System providers had kept up?

Aaron Hawkins, Real-time Earth Business Manager at Viasat said that his company had moved rapidly into adaptable infrastructure for multi-orbit demands.  He said Viasat tried to make life very simple for our customers having conversations as to drill down as to what they actually needed. We can provide engineers to help them, of course, but the main challenge we have is to identify the customer’s actual needs. The old way was to serve a $500 million satellite with a couple of ground antennas costing perhaps a million or two. Now, satellites are costing a fraction of that sum but with perhaps much greater data-rates. It means we have to work with ground-station partners.  Multi-mission modems, multi-satellite orbits and solutions. We moved from Gigabit to Terabit and this won’t change. 

Mr Hawkins also said that despite weather considerations there would definitely be a need for optical solutions. “We are not going to switch overnight to optical, but it’s happening.”

Chris Faletra, President/CEO at Comsat said the changes in Ground Station demand and use were dramatic, and where incoming demand meant multiple feeds, and handling data-centric services. “Our technicians today tend not to be traditional RF engineers but are now network-savvy, IP-friendly and are extremely adjustable and adaptable and extremely computer literate.”

“There’s also been a change from giant antennas which are not just expensive to build but costly to maintain. Smaller antenna, say at 4 metres and less, are much simpler. They are cheaper to build. I don’t need to bring in civil engineers and power supply experts to build and connect the antenna,” he added.

Jai Dialani, US MD at Leaf Space said that software defined reconfigurability was essential. Today’s customers were using multiple bands and the antennas had to cope. “Our client’s missions are usually different one from the other. They might be Earth Observation focussed, as well as a hundred-and-one different communications usages. We have several clients, especially those who rideshare on SpaceX, who want to speedily manage the challenges of handling multiple and near-simultaneous demands.”

Dr. Diana Gamzina, CEO at amplifier manufacturer Elve, said that Ka-band and frequencies above would increasingly be sharing the same dish which is a major change from the past. She explained that the likes of SpaceX’s Starlink and that of other mega-constellations have totally changed the ground station model, and the need to move and push the data onward. “Optical is a shiny tool,” she admitted.

Amir Kashanizadeh, Dir. Of Systems Engineering at Spacebridge, said that managing different data rates, different wave forms and multiple use systems was now the everyday challenge. “We aim to orchestrate the network to suit the customer, and we are developing and investing in new techniques for handling APIs using AI. This is likely to be within the 2-3 year timeframe.”

Iridium’s Desch: We also believe in D2D

By Chris Forrester

Dara Panahy, Partner, Millbank LLP, interviewed Matt Desch, CEO at Iridium at the SmallSat Symposium, held at Mountain View, on February 4.  Desch admitted – with a smile on his face – that he is very old and was familiar with what was now best called 1G and 2G. “I was the 6th CEO at Iridium, and despite the bankruptcy I knew that this was a segment that would not easily be commoditised.”

Desch explained that Iridium was very much looking to the future, and was not especially fazed by the newcomers such as AST SpaceMobile or Starlink. 

He reminisced about the early days at Iridium. “My goal initially was survival, cash-flow, and establishing a solid business model. Our satellites were limited in life and one of my main worries was keeping them in orbit until they could be replaced in a timely manner.”

“One of the initial challenges was to keep our staff. I promised them that we were going to grow and we have built a team that does work together. We built respect for each other, with good communications between each other. Some of the board wanted to cash in, some had quite different views as to their ambitions. We needed to paint a clear picture as to our aims and ambitions, and how we would achieve our future. Getting the right people to share that process was key.”

He explained the problems which happened when a Russian satellite crashed into one of the Iridium fleet. “It was on the nightly news although at the time it was the first time anything like this had happened. But it led to the industry coming up with solutions to minimise the problems happening again.”

“We invented an aircraft tracking and controlling business and is now generating millions of dollars. Iridium has always been constrained, by spectrum, by money, but it made us very creative.”

“I am proud of the direction we have followed. We knew what we were good at. I have had to explain our role in direct-to-device, and am a firm believer that there will be successful players and we will be one of them. We are in almost every aircraft cockpit. I am not interested in investing a lot of money in order to just expand revenues by a percentage point or two.”

“We have 2.5 million subs. Almost 1000 staff. D2D is going to be a huge business for us. Starlink and AST are great regional and country-by-country systems, but although we started with a Qualcomm proprietary solution but we have now pivoted to a standard-based solution. I firmly believe it’s going to be a huge business for us in standards and hope that the phone systems will have something that [enables them] to work everywhere, and this includes Iot.”

Optical Communication demand is growing, just like data 

By Chris Forrester

Moderator: Noel Rimalovski, MD at GH Partners, brought together a specialised panel at the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View on February 4 to discuss optical communications. Each and every panelist expressed confidence in the prospects for laser-based connectivity and the needs for high-security was key.

Mr Rimalovski asked his panel ‘why optical’ over and above RF transmission? Ankit Rohatgi, Business Development Director at Swedish Space Corp., said that security and overall high-data capacity was driving demand. It was also worth remembering that on-board processing on a satellite needs resources but this will happen, and then the bigger the need for data to be delivered to the ground.

Robert Conrad, President, Kepler Communications, said it could not be over-stressed the need for super-security of signals and data. He stressed that demand was great but working with vendors to scale up, and yet to maintain quality was sometimes a challenge.  The Earth Observation market, for example, generates vast amounts of data. “It is only going to grow, and this included defence, natural disasters, and so forth. And the data is needed immediately.”

Mr Conrad said it was also essential that inter-satellite optical links were readied, from LEO to MEO and GEO as well as to the ground. Smaller optical terminals were also needed, and while already here today it was clear that more progress would be needed. Kepler was involved in space-to-ground as well as aircraft and drone, and sizes were under development for these applications. 

Dr. Jordan Vannitsen, Co-founder & CEO at Odysseus Space, said it was almost a ‘chicken and egg’ transition and while nobody expected RF to vanish, far from it, there had to be optical solutions. “RF will be here for years to come, but optical was the future.”

Sven Rettig, CCO at Tesat Spacecom, said that ground-based planning for optical needed sunny spots but it was fairly easy to find solutions which delivered reliability for clients despite potential bad weather.  He explained that Tesat had been interested in optical applications since the mid-1990s. We are now producing systems at a rate of one-per-day and are ramping up to a five-per-day output. The demand from the market is way higher than we and even our competitors can handle. We must not forget that optical is creating new applications. 

Jeff Huggins, CEO USA at Cailabs, explained that the optical supply industry was a little like very large telescope manufacturing. Look at observatories, he said, where a supplier might build just one giant telescope per year. But asked to scale up, and to build 50 per annum and it is sometimes very difficult not just in components but financing. When you have huge, really huge, pipes of data coming down from space then it is AI that will handle and translate this data. 

Sir Peter Beck, Founder and CEO, Rocket Lab “This is the best time in history to be bold”

By Chris Forrester

Rocket Lab is increasingly making very real headlines for its end-to-end solutions – not dissimilar to Elon Musk in terms of practical and reliable rockets – and his Rocket Lab’s two-stage Electron vehicle.  Founder Sir Peter Beck, addressed delegates to the SmallSat Symposium direct from his office in New Zealand. 

He said that never before had the industry seen so many rockets available, and that small launch challenges were mostly solved. “I don’t want to be controversial, but Europe still thinks its 2015, not 2025. Super-heavy launch is great but not a silver bullet. However, having your own launch site is more important than ever. Look at large rockets a little like an Airbus 380, which is wonderful to look at but we like to think we should be compared to a Private Jet.”

“The default situation in satellite manufacturing is that there are lots of opportunities. 300 spacecraft is now a small number, and large constellations are the default. But the supply chain is constrained, and scale is desperately needed. Many suppliers are, in essence, small shops and creating the base-line infrastructure is expensive. Bespoke products are still needed but off-the-shelf stock is now available, and this is driving costs down. I want my own stocks to be adequate, whether it is a rocket or a reaction wheel.”

“My view is of some applications is that Earth Observation is pretty much done. Demand keeps growing but one doesn’t see a whole bunch of EO businesses emerging. Communications, to my mind, is all about internet and Direct-to-Device, but it is a hard place to be. The big space companies of the future are end-to-end, and this means Launch-Spacecraft-Applications. These are going to be the behemoths. Will they be Space or Satellite company or an Application company?”

Sir Peter grumbled about the SPAC frenzy which, while helping to identify some sustainable businesses, created some headaches. “That dust is now settling, and the quality of companies is improving. Funding is picking up, but is more discerning. This is the best time in history for being bold.”

He gave his predictions for 2025, saying there would be more consolidation for legacy players and this included small to midcap businesses. China is going to become more competitive and push more resources into space. 

He predicted that a couple of rocket companies would fail, but Mars would get a lot of attention. “The opportunity is endless. There has never been a more exciting time in space. I am super-bullish.”