SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket sends 64 satellites into space from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base in December 2018 to kick off Spaceflight’s SSO-A satellite rideshare mission. (SpaceX Photo)
Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries has taken the spotlight in a research note from Morgan Stanley for disrupting the process of putting satellites in space — in a good way.
The note, sent to the investment firm’s clients last Friday by analyst Adam Jonas and his colleagues, pays tribute to Spaceflight Industries’ two business lines. One subsidiary, Spaceflight, arranges for payloads to share rides on other people’s rockets. The other subsidiary, BlackSky, offers satellite imagery from a range of spacecraft, soon to include its own Global constellation.
SpaceIL’s Beresheet lunar lander is suspended at a payload processing facility in Florida. (SpaceIL Photo via Twitter)
The managers of Israel’s first mission to the moon say their lunar lander has passed a crucial set of tests in preparation for February’s launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with an assist from a Seattle space company.
SpaceIL’s lander — which has been dubbed Beresheet, the Hebrew word for “In the Beginning” — is scheduled for liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida no earlier than Feb. 18.
Mission success would make Israel the fourth nation to execute a soft landing on the moon, following in the footsteps of the United States, Russia and China.
Spaceflight, the launch logistics subsidiary of Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries, brokered Beresheet’s inclusion as a secondary payload on a mission that will send Indonesia’s PSN-6 telecommunications satellite, also known as Nusantara Satu, toward geostationary orbit.
As initially designed, Swarm Technologies’ controversial SpaceBEE satellites were each roughly the size of a sandwich. (Swarm Technologies Illustration via FCC)
The Federal Communications Commission says Swarm Technologies must pay a $900,000 fine and be subject to increased scrutiny for having a tiny set of satellites launched without authorization.
“We will aggressively enforce the FCC’s requirements that companies seek FCC authorization prior to deploying and operating communications satellites and earth stations,” Rosemary Harold, chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau, said in a news release. “These important obligations protect other operators against radio interference and collisions, making space a safer place to operate.”
California-based Swarm is aiming to develop a constellation of miniaturized telecommunications satellites that would enable “low-cost, space-based connectivity anywhere in the world.”
The company drew the FCC’s ire after a four-pack of its sandwich-sized satellites, known as SpaceBEEs, was launched aboard an Indian PSLV rocket in January — even though the agency had turned down its application for authorization. FCC officials were concerned that the 4-inch-wide, 1-inch-thick satellites would be too small to be tracked in orbit.
The launch was facilitated by Seattle-based Spaceflight, which said it was not aware at the time that Swarm’s application had been rejected.
An artist’s conception shows the Amazonia-1 satellite. (INPE Illustration)
Seattle-based Spaceflight says it’s struck one of its biggest deals for a satellite launch with Brazil’s space research institute, focusing on putting the Amazonia-1 satellite into low Earth orbit in mid-2020.
The contract was awarded on Dec. 18 during a ceremony in São José dos Campos, attended by Brazilian space officials as well as Melissa Wuerl, Spaceflight’s vice president of business development.
Amazonia-1 is designed to make observations of Brazilian territory, with a special focus on the Amazon region, for the National Institute for Space Research, known in Portuguese as the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais or INPE.
It’s the first Earth observation satellite to be completely designed, integrated, tested and operated by Brazil.
A satellite image of Beijing, captured by one of Planet’s SkySat spacecraft, shows the Chinese capital’s futuristic high-speed rail station toward the left edge of the frame. (Planet Photo)
Some of those satellites are already beaming back pictures of our planet. For example, Planet has shared images from both of the SkySat high-resolution imaging satellites that served as the lead payloads for Seattle-based Spaceflight’s dedicated rideshare launch on the Falcon 9. That mission, known as the SmallSat Express or SSO-A, lifted off on Dec. 3 from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.
SpaceX’s first triple-launched Falcon 9 booster lights up to send 64 satellites into space. (SpaceX Photo)
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched Seattle-based Spaceflight’s first-ever dedicated rideshare mission, a satellite extravaganza aimed at placing 64 spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
Today’s liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California came off at 10:34 a.m. PT, sending the scorch-marked rocket into clear skies. The mission had been delayed several times over the past couple of weeks, due to concerns about upper-level winds and the need for more pre-launch inspections.
This mission delivered a first for SpaceX as well as for Spaceflight: It marked the first time SpaceX sent the same first-stage booster into space and back three times.
The upgraded Block 5 booster had its previous liftoffs in May and August, and today SpaceX recovered the booster yet again. Minutes after launch, it touched down on a drone ship stationed out in the Pacific Ocean, christened “Just Read the Instructions.”
A twice-flown SpaceX Falcon booster is readied for its third mission, set for launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Scorch marks make the booster look “sooty.” (SpaceX Photo via Twitter)
Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries is closing in on what’s shaping up as a grand convergence in commercial space.
Spaceflight, which handles launch logistics for small satellites, is nearly ready for its most ambitious mission yet: the “dedicated rideshare” launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will deliver 64 satellites to a pole-to-pole, sun-synchronous orbit.
India’s PSLV rocket lifts off to send 31 satellites into orbit. (ISRO Video)
The first Earth observation satellite for Seattle-based BlackSky’s Global constellation has been sent into orbit aboard an Indian rocket.
Global-1 was just one of 30 secondary payloads for the PSLV-C43 mission, launched at 9:57 a.m. local time Nov. 29 (8:27 p.m. PT Nov. 28) from the Indian Space Research Organization’s Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota. All those satellites went into a sun-synchronous, nearly pole-to-pole orbit at an altitude of 504 kilometers (313 miles).
The primary payload aboard the four-stage Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle was India’s Hyper Spectral Imaging Satellite, or HySIS, which is designed to capture Earth imagery in visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared wavelengths from a height of 636 kilometers (395 miles). Potential applications range from weather and climate research to agriculture monitoring and water management.
Spaceflight’s team gathers in front of SpaceX’s facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California during preparations for a dedicated-rideshare launch. (SpaceflightInc via Twitter)
Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries laid out the status of a debt restructuring plan this week in advance of its most ambitious satellite launch operation to date.
Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 13 describe an offering of $29.9 million in debt instruments and options for other securities, with five investors participating to date. The filing said $22 million of the offering has been sold, with $7.9 million remaining.
Spaceflight Industries spokeswoman Jodi Sorensen told GeekWire in an email that the filing was triggered when the company finished up a restructuring deal.
“Part of that funding ($15M) went through restructuring, making it more available to us, while the current investors did invest another $7M,” she explained. “So some is from restructuring, some is net new investment.”
SpaceIL’s lander is on display in a clean room. (SpaceIL Photo / Eliran Avital)
SpaceIL’s lunar lander is go for launch as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that’s due to send a telecommunications satellite into geosynchronous orbit, Seattle-based Spaceflight announced today.
The launch, expected early next year, would represent the first Spaceflight rideshare mission to go beyond low Earth orbit. And Israel-based SpaceIL’s mission would represent the first non-governmental landing on the moon.
Spaceflight timed its announcement to coincide with Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week conference in Paris. It said rideshare opportunities to geosynchronous transfer orbit, or GTO, would be made available every 12 to 18 months, or as customer demand requires.
Although Spaceflight didn’t identify the primary payload for Spaceflight’s first GTO mission, it’s thought to be the PSN-6 telecommunications satellite, which was built for Indonesia’s PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara by SSL, a Maxar Technologies subsidiary. This would be the first combined launch for Spaceflight and SSL.
