Tag: Satellites

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Starfish and Space Force lay out satellite docking plan

Illustration: Otter spacecraft in high Earth orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Otter spacecraft in geostationary Earth orbit. (Starfish Space Illustration)

The U.S. Space Force says a Pentagon partnership with Tukwila, Wash.-based Starfish Space will result in a “first-of-its-kind docking mission” aimed at adding to the maneuverability of national security assets on orbit.

Starfish Space’s $37.5 million contract for a demonstration of the startup’s Otter satellite docking spacecraft was awarded two weeks ago, but the Space Force’s Space Systems Command released further details about the project today.

The Space Systems Command said its Assured Access to Space program will be working in partnership with Starfish Space as well as the Air Force Research Laboratory’s SpaceWERX program, Space Safari and the SSC Commercial Space Office to improve the responsiveness, resilience and strategic flexibility of U.S. space assets.

“This project is another step forward in delivering what our warfighters require in sustained space maneuver,” said Col. Joyce Bulson, director of servicing, mobility and logistics in the Assured Access to Space program.

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Amazon takes Seattle’s satellite industry to the next level

Students in electronics lab
Students at Lake Washington Institute of Technology get hands-on lab training. (LWIT Photo)

Amazon says it’s establishing a logistics facility in Everett, Wash., and partnering with a technical college in Kirkland, Wash., to boost the supply chain and workforce pipeline for its Project Kuiper satellite broadband network.

Project Kuiper is Amazon’s $10 billion effort to build and launch more than 3,000 satellites that will offer high-speed internet access to tens of millions of people around the world. The project already employs more than 2,000 people at Puget Sound locations, including a 172,000-square-foot satellite factory in Kirkland and a 219,000-square-foot research and development facility in Redmond, Wash.

Amazon’s partnership with Lake Washington Institute of Technology in Kirkland — which is less than a 10-minute drive from the satellite factory — takes the form of a satellite technician certificate program that will prepare students for careers in aerospace assembly and manufacturing.

Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president of public policy and community engagement, said in a news release that the partnership “will help create a pipeline of future satellite technicians to meet the evolving needs of this area’s thriving space and satellite sectors, and give more people the opportunity to take part in Project Kuiper’s important mission.”

Some of those technicians may find themselves working at the newly announced 184,000-square-foot receiving and logistics facility in Everett, which is a half-hour drive north of Kirkland. Amazon said the hub is due to come fully online by next month, and will bring about 200 skilled technician jobs to the Everett area.

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Starfish tests its first satellite and wins millions for more

Illustration: Otter Pup satellite in space
An artist’s conception shows the Otter Pup satellite. (Starfish Space Illustration)

Months after Starfish Space said it was giving up on its plan to test its satellite docking system in orbit, due to a thruster failure, the Tukwila, Wash.-based startup managed to coax one last rendezvous out of its first space mission.

And this week brought more good news for Starfish Space, in the form of a $37.5 million contract from the U.S. Space Force for further work on its in-space rendezvous and docking technology.

Last month’s close encounter involving Starfish’s Otter Pup spacecraft and D-Orbit’s ION SCV006 satellite wasn’t as close as the original test plan called for, and it was up to ION to do all of the orbital maneuvering. Nevertheless, Starfish Space co-founder Trevor Bennett said the exercise brought Otter Pup’s mission to a successful close.

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Portal Space reveals plan for satellites fired up by the sun

Illustration: Portal Space Systems satellite bus in orbit
An artist’s conception shows Portal’s Supernova satellite bus in orbit. (Portal Space Systems Illustration)

A Seattle-area startup called Portal Space Systems is emerging from stealth to share its vision for a type of satellite that’s apparently never been put into space before: a spacecraft that uses the heat of the sun to spark its thrusters.

The technology, known as solar thermal propulsion, could be put to its first in-space test as early as next year.

“I’m not aware of anybody that has flown any system with solar thermal propulsion, in the U.S., or foreign for that matter,” Portal co-founder and CEO Jeff Thornburg told me. “I mean, it could have happened, but maybe no one’s aware of it.”

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal says it has already been awarded more than $3 million by the Defense Department and the U.S. Space Force to support the development of its Supernova satellite bus. In space industry parlance, a bus is the basic spacecraft infrastructure that supports a satellite’s payloads.

Supernova-based satellites would be equipped with a solar concentrator apparatus that focuses the sun’s rays on a heat exchanger. “It’s a very simple system,” Thornburg said. “You pass your monopropellant through a hot heat exchanger, and out comes thrust.”

The technology has the potential to give satellites much more mobility in orbit — which could smooth the way for applications ranging from rounding up orbital debris to responding to international crises.

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Amazon CEO’s letter gives a lift to Kuiper satellite network

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket sends two prototype Project Kuiper satellites into orbit for Amazon in October 2023. (ULA Photo)
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket sends two prototype Project Kuiper satellites into orbit for Amazon in October 2023. (ULA Photo)

In his annual letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company’s Project Kuiper satellite venture will be “a very large revenue opportunity” in the future — but he’s hedging his bets as to exactly when that future will be.

Eventually, Project Kuiper aims to provide satellite broadband service to hundreds of millions of people around the world who are currently underserved when it comes to connectivity. Such a service would compete with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, which already has more than 2.6 million customers.

Amazon is investing more than $10 billion to get Kuiper off the ground. The plan calls for sending 3,232 satellites (down slightly from the originally planned 3,236) into low Earth orbit by 2029. Under the terms of the Federal Communications Commission’s license, half of that total would have to be deployed by mid-2026.

When Project Kuiper’s first two prototype satellites were launched last October for testing, Amazon said that its first production-grade satellites were on track for launch in the first half of 2024, and that it expected broadband service to be in beta testing with selected customers by the end of the year.

Today, Jassy put a slightly different spin on that schedule. “We’re on track to launch our first production satellites in 2024,” he wrote in his letter. “We’ve still got a long way to go, but are encouraged by our progress.”

Jassy amplified on those remarks in an interview with CNBC. “The first big production pieces will be the second half of ’24, and we expect to have the service up in the next year or so,” he said.

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Blue Origin makes plans to test Blue Ring tech in orbit

Illustration: Blue Ring logistics vehicle in orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Blue Ring logistics vehicle in orbit. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says that technology for its Blue Ring orbital platform will be put to the test during an upcoming mission sponsored by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.

Blue Ring is a multi-mission, multi-orbit vehicle that’s being developed to facilitate logistical services in orbit. The Pentagon-backed mission, known as DarkSky-1, will demonstrate Blue Origin’s flight system, including space-based data processing and storage capabilities, ground-based radiometric tracking and Blue Ring’s telemetry, tracking and command hardware, also known as TT&C.

“The lessons learned from this DS-1 mission will provide a leap forward for Blue Ring and its ability to provide greater access to multiple orbits, bringing us closer to our vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth,” Paul Ebertz, senior vice president of Blue Origin’s In-Space Systems business unit, said today in a news release.

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Lumen Orbit raises $2.4M to put data centers in space

Illustration: Lumen Orbit satellite in space
An artist’s conception shows Lumen Orbit’s satellite in space. (Lumen Orbit Illustration)

Bellevue, Wash.-based Lumen Orbit, a startup that’s only about three months old, says that it’s closed a $2.4 million pre-seed investment round to launch its plan to put hundreds of satellites in orbit, with the goal of processing data in space before it’s downloaded to customers on Earth.

The investors include Nebular, Caffeinated Capital, Plug & Play, Everywhere Ventures, Tiny.vc, Sterling Road, Pareto Holdings and Foreword Ventures. There are also more than 20 angel investors, including four Sequoia Scouts investing through the Sequoia Scout Fund. “The round was 3x oversubscribed,” Lumen CEO and co-founder Philip Johnston told GeekWire in an email.

Johnston is a former associate at McKinsey & Co. who also co-founded an e-commerce venture called Opontia. Lumen’s other co-founders are chief technology officer Ezra Feilden, whose resume includes engineering experience at Oxford Space Systems and Airbus Defense and Space; and chief engineer Adi Oltean, who worked as a software engineer at SpaceX’s Starlink facility in Redmond, Wash.

“We started Lumen with the mission of launching a constellation of orbital data centers for in-space edge processing,” Oltean explained in an email. “Essentially, other satellites will send our constellation the raw data they collect. Using our on-board GPUs, we will run AI models of their choosing to extract insights, which we will then downlink for them. This will save bandwidth downlinking large amounts of raw data and associated cost and latency.”

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Quindar raises $6M to automate satellite management

Screenshots of Quindar's satellite control dashboard
Screenshots show Quindar’s spacecraft management platform at work. (Image via Quindar)

A space-centric startup called Quindar says it has successfully closed an oversubscribed $6 million funding round that will give a boost to its cloud-hosted, AI-supported software platform for satellite management.

The seed extension round was led by the Seattle-area venture capital firm Fuse, with continuing investment from Y Combinator and Funders Club. The round builds upon last year’s initial seed round and brings total funding to date to $8.5 million, Quindar CEO and co-founder Nate Hamet told GeekWire in an email.

“The infusion of funding will propel our mission to manage satellites as efficiently as servers by utilizing AI-driven insights and operations to revolutionize the industry’s approach to spacecraft management,” Quindar said today in an announcement about the investment round.

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SpaceX launches satellites that cellphones could use

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket ignition
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lights up its engines to send Starlink satellites to space from a California launch pad. (SpaceX via Twitter / X)

The first satellites capable of providing direct-to-cellular service via SpaceX’s Starlink network and T-Mobile’s cellular network have been sent into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Six of the cell-capable satellites were among a batch of 21 Starlink satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 7:44 p.m. PT Jan. 2. The satellites were deployed successfully, and the rocket’s first-stage booster made a routine landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.

SpaceX plans to launch hundreds of the upgraded satellites in the months ahead, with the aim of beginning satellite-enabled texting later this year. 4G LTE satellite connectivity for voice and data via unmodified mobile devices would follow in 2025, pending regulatory approval.

“Today’s launch is a pivotal moment for this groundbreaking alliance with SpaceX and our global partners around the world, as we work to make dead zones a thing of the past,” Mike Katz, president of marketing, strategy and products for Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile, said today in a news release.

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Amazon reveals that its satellites are using lasers

Illustration: Globe with satellite mesh pattern and laser connection highlighted
This graphic shows how Project Kuiper would use optical signaling between satellites. (Amazon Illustration)

Ending years of speculation, Amazon has acknowledged that its Project Kuiper satellites will use laser-based links to communicate with each other, and says the system has already been successfully tested in orbit.

Such a system — known as optical inter-satellite links, or OISL — passes along data more quickly and efficiently than sending signals down from satellites to ground stations, through fiber-optic cables and then back up to other satellites.

“With optical inter-satellite links across our satellite constellation, Project Kuiper will effectively operate as a mesh network in space,” Rajeev Badyal, Project Kuiper’s vice president of technology, said today in a news release. “This system is designed fully in-house to optimize for speed, cost and reliability, and the entire architecture has worked flawlessly from the very start.”

Amazon said the infrared laser system was tested using two prototype satellites that were launched into low Earth orbit in October. The system was able to maintain data transmission speeds of 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) over a distance of nearly 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) during test windows lasting an hour or more.

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