Tag: Spaceflight Inc.

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PT Scientists go with Spaceflight for moonshot

Lander and rover
PTScientists’ ALINA lander is designed to carry two Audi Lunar Quattro rovers to the moon’s surface. (PTScientists Photo)

A German team that’s going after the Google Lunar XPRIZE has secured a contract with Seattle-based Spaceflight to get its rover-carrying lander to the moon.

PTScientists, based in Berlin, announced the deal today, and Spaceflight confirmed the partnership. If the contract is verified by the $30 million contest’s organizers at XPRIZE, the group will join three other contestants in the home stretch for the top prize for commercial lunar exploration.

Spaceflight struck a similar deal last year with an Israeli-based GLXP team, SpaceIL. The two other verified teams are Moon Express and Synergy Moon.

There are 16 teams in the GLXP hunt, but they have to have verified launch contracts by the end of this year in order to stay in the competition.

The top prize of $20 million will go to the first team to send a spacecraft to the moon and have it travel more than 500 meters (1,640 feet) while sending back images and video. Other prizes are being offered as extra incentives. If no team gets to the moon by the end of 2017, all those prizes go poof.

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BlackSky satellite delivers its first pictures

Image: Chinese mountain
An image from Spaceflight Industries’ BlackSky Pathfinder-1 satellite shows farms and industrial sites around Beijing. Click on the image for a larger version. (Credit: Spaceflight Industries / BlackSky)

Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries is sharing some of the first pictures of Earth ever taken by its low-cost, high-resolution BlackSky Pathfinder-1 satellite – and they’re spectacular.

The roughly 100-pound (50-kilogram) Pathfinder-1 spacecraft was launched from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Center on Sept. 26 as a ride-share payload on a PSLV-C35 rocket. Spaceflight Industries says the satellite cost $10 million to build and launch, which is relatively cheap for orbital imaging capability.

The Pathfinder-1 images released today confirm that the BlackSky concept works. The pictures provide breathtaking views of farms and industrial sites near Beijing, the suburbs surrounding Tokyo, and mountain ranges in China and Afghanistan.

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Spaceflight signs up Google for satellite launch

Terral Bella's SkySat satellites
An artist’s conception shows Terra Bella’s SkySat satelltes in orbit. (Credit: Terra Bella)

Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries says it’s made a deal with Terra Bella to have the Google subsidiary’s Earth-observing satellites launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket next year.

The agreement makes Terra Bella, which was known as Skybox Imaging before Google bought it for $500 million in 2014, the lead payload provider on a dedicated-rideshare mission arranged through Spaceflight Industries’ launch services entity, known simply as Spaceflight.

“At this point, it looks like Terra Bella may be the only lead,” Spaceflight’s president, Curt Blake, told GeekWire in an email today. So far, seven of Terra Bella’s SkySat satellites have been put into orbit, and that number is expected to grow to 24. Blake declined to say how many of Terra Bella’s satellites would be launched on Spaceflight’s mission in late 2017.

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Spaceflight moves ahead on satellite portal

Image: Spaceflight Industries at work
One of BlackSky’s Pathfinder satellites undergoes final integration. (Credit: BlackSky)

Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries is moving ahead on two fronts to build an online portal for satellite imagery: It has secured $18 million in new venture capital, and is acquiring a Virginia-based company called OpenWhere to create the software platform for distributing the images.

“It’s all about the democratization of data about the planet,” Jason Andrews, CEO of Spaceflight Industries, told GeekWire.

The current round of Series B financing is led by Mithril Capital Management, a San Francisco investment firm founded by Ajay Royan and PayPal veteran Peter Thiel. (Yes, that Peter Thiel.) Other contributors to the round include previous investors RRE Venture Capital; Razor’s Edge Ventures; and Vulcan Capital, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s investment arm.

By the time the round is complete, Spaceflight Industries expects to raise as much as $25 million. That would bring cumulative investment in the privately held company to $53.5 million.

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Now it’s easier for feds to buy a launch

Image: SHERPA carrier
Spaceflight’s SHERPA carrier is set to deploy 87 satellites. (Credit: Spaceflight)

Federal agencies can now buy a satellite launch as easily as they buy pencils, thanks to a new arrangement with Seattle-based Spaceflight.

OK, maybe it’s not quite that easy. You still have to get the go-ahead to put something into orbit, whether you’re a climate scientist at NASA or Agent Fox Mulder at the FBI. But once that go-ahead is given, the launch can be ordered from a standardized menu instead of going through a months-long contracting process.

“What this does is make it a more expeditious process,” Spaceflight’s president, Curt Blake, told GeekWire.

Spaceflight is the first launch service provider to be awarded what’s known as a General Services Administration Professional Services Schedule. That means any federal official who’s authorized to spend the money can order a CubeSat or a MicroSat launch online, via the GSA Advantage’s eBuy site.

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An out-of-this-world deal for Cyber Monday

Image: CubeSats
Spaceflight’s Cyber Monday deal will deliver satellites to orbit in 2018. (Credit: Spaceflight)

Here’s a Cyber Monday deal from Seattle-based Spaceflight for the space geek on your list: Purchase a satellite launch for one-third off, at the low, low price of $200,000.

The only catch is that you’ll have to wait until 2018 for the satellite to be delivered. But that’s the way it is with travel plans, whether you’re heading to a vacation resort or putting a 3U CubeSat in a sun-synchronous orbit 310 miles (500 kilometers) above the planet. “Booking early is the best for both parties,” said Phil Brzytwa, Spaceflight’s business development manager.

Through the end of the year, Spaceflight is offering up to 36 CubeSat spots on the company’s SHERPA satellite port at $200,000 (marked down from the list price of $295,000), and it’s not clear how long they’ll last.

“Already this morning we’ve had seven inquiries from all around the planet, and my inbox is filling up,” Brzytwa told GeekWire. There’s a limit of four CubeSats per customer.

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Three future frontiers for Seattle space ventures

Image: Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos shows off the concept for Blue Origin’s launch system during a September news conference in Florida. Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is headquartered in Kent, Wash. (Blue Origin photo)

What is it about Seattle that’s led some folks to call it the “Silicon Valley of space,”and how far can space entrepreneurs go in the next 20 years? One of the panels at Friday’s Xconomy Seattle 2035 conference tackled those questions – and added a couple of shorter-term predictions as well.

Jason Andrews, the CEO of Seattle-based Spaceflight Inc., listed three reasons why Seattle is up there with Southern California, Silicon Valley, Texas and Florida’s Space Coast when it comes to commercial spaceflight.

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Spaceflight buys SpaceX rocket for satellites

Image: SpaceX launch
A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off in April, sending cargo to the International Space Station. The payloads included Planetary Resources’ A3R satellite, which was flown under an arrangement with Seattle-based Spaceflight. (Credit: SpaceX)

In the first deal of its kind, Seattle-based Spaceflight says it’s buying a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will be set aside exclusively for launching other people’s small satellites into orbit.

The first dedicated rideshare launch is due to go into sun-synchronous low Earth orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California during the latter half of 2017, said Curt Blake, president of Spaceflight’s launch business. Sun-synchronous orbits are particularly popular for Earth imaging satellites, and Spaceflight anticipates buying a dedicated SpaceX Falcon 9 every year to service the market.

“By purchasing and manifesting the entire SpaceX rocket, Spaceflight is well-positioned to meet the small-sat industry’s growing demand for routine, reliable access to space,” Blake said in a statement issued Wednesday.

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