Tag Archive for: Cubesat

NanoAvionics

NanoAvionics received an order for three additional satellites from OQ Technology of Luxembourg, which raised $13 million in September to build out a small constellation of 5G narrowband nanosatellites for Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity.

NanoAvionics has constructed three satellites for OQ Technology, of which two have already been launched into orbit. The launch of the third satellite, known as MACSAT, has been postponed due to the failure of an Arianespace-operated Vega C rocket in December 2022. However, following a recent announcement from the European Space Agency regarding the investigation outcome and way forward, OQ Technology’s CEO expressed confidence that MACSAT will fly this year.

Additionally, NanoAvionics has been awarded a contract to build three 6U cubesats named Tiger-4, Tiger-7, and Tiger-8, which will carry 5G NB-IoT payloads provided by OQ Technology. The new satellites will be built at a new facility in Vilnius, Lithuania, and will have onboard propulsion for deployment, formation flying, and end-of-life disposal. OQ Technology’s CEO sees the new satellites as a means of expanding their global coverage and entering new markets. NanoAvionics’ CEO attributes the repeat business to the company’s standardization, automation, and experience with communications missions.

Three in orbit

According to a news release from OQ Technology on March 13, the company has launched three Tiger nanosatellites since 2018, and plans to have 10 satellites in orbit by late 2023 or early 2024.

The remaining satellite launches are scheduled to take place this year, with the final ones potentially launching in early 2024, depending on launch conditions.

OQ Technology’s current constellation includes Tiger-1, a 6U cubesat built by Denmark’s GomSpace, which was launched in February 2018 on a Chinese Long March 2D rocket, as well as Tiger-2 and Tiger-3, both 6U cubesats built by NanoAvionics and launched in June 2021 and April 2022, respectively, on SpaceX’s dedicated rideshare missions.

Seven in the pipeline

In addition to the recently ordered Tiger-4, Tiger-7, and Tiger-8 satellites from NanoAvionics and the previously built MACSAT awaiting the resumption of Vega launches, OQ Technology has ordered two 6U cubesats, Tiger-5 and Tiger-6, from Denmark-based Space Inventor.

The company is also collaborating with the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre of the United Arab Emirates on the development of a 12U modular satellite platform named PHI-Demo (short for Payload Hosting Initiative demonstration), which will carry OQ Technology’s communications payload.

This payload will store and forward data collected from IoT devices, while SteamJet Space Systems, based in Birmingham, England, will supply the satellite’s water-based propulsion system.

“The PHI mission represents a major enabler for us in expanding our global satellite 5G coverage and also business in the [Middle East and North Africa] region,” Qaise said in a January 2022 announcement.

Manufacturers who previously focused on producing big geostationary satellites have successfully broadened their product lines to attract new customers.

At the Satellite 2023 conference, Cyrus Dhalla, the senior vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman Tactical Space Systems Division, stated that the satellite industry has transformed entirely instead of being on the brink of change. The era of ordering 20 geostationary communication satellites yearly has gone. Claude Rousseau, the moderator of the panel and NSR research director, said that nowadays, there are around 10 to 14 annual orders.

Thus, satellite manufacturers have shifted to offer small and medium-size satellites to both commercial and government clients. Furthermore, many nations now demand their independent space capability, and as a result, satellite companies have extended their services to government clients. Jonathan Caldwell, the Lockheed Martin military space vice president and general manager, made this observation.

Radically Reduced Price

According to Jonathan Caldwell, Lockheed Martin now produces more small satellites than large ones. He also mentioned that the commonality factor is crucial in small satellite manufacturers.

Caldwell also pointed out that Terran Orbital, a Florida-based company that won a $2.4 billion contract to provide satellites for Rivada Space Networks, is among the firms that Lockheed Martin is supporting. Caldwell expressed confidence in Terran Orbital’s capacity to manufacture 300 Rivada satellites quickly and efficiently, saying that they would deliver on the contract.

Caldwell also stated that Terran Orbital’s ability to expand its small satellite manufacturers capabilities would enable Lockheed Martin to provide customers with satellites at a “radically reduced price point.”

Risky Business

Jean-Marc Nasr, the executive vice president of space systems at Airbus Defence and Space, mentioned that small satellites are proving to be profitable for Airbus because of standardization, even though larger satellites are more expensive.

Airbus is selling its Arrow 450, which is produced by Airbus OneWeb Satellites, to various customers, including Northrop Grumman. Nasr forecasts potential sales of 500 to 1,000 units in the next five years. Building large satellites for specific customer requirements is more hazardous than mass-producing small satellites, Nasr said.

He advises companies to master their supply chain and continuously scrutinize their make-or-buy decisions. If other firms can produce parts or components more efficiently, it’s best to enter into long-term agreements with them to keep costs in line, according to Nasr.

GEO Remains Important

Thales Alenia Space supplies small satellites through its partnership with BlackSky, with a market driven by both telecommunications and Earth observation, according to Hervé Derrey, the CEO of Thales Alenia Space.

Despite the growth in small satellite demand, Derrey emphasized the continuing importance of large geostationary satellites. He also mentioned that specific telecommunication missions would be challenging and expensive to accomplish with satellites in low or medium-Earth orbit.

More Smallsat Orders

U.S. government customers have clearly expressed their desire to rely less on large satellites.

“They’re going to continue buying some capabilities in GEO,” Dhalla said. “We are seeing orders for much smaller satellites.”

Even satellites once considered mid-size, like Northrop Grumman’s GEOStar platform, looked big to a recent factory visitor.

“Time has really changed hasn’t it, when you look at something that was considered small five to 10 years ago” and someone comments on how big it is, Dhalla said.

Going Faster

In the face of myriad market opportunities, Maxar Technologies will “leverage the commercial go-fast mentality” to meet customer demands for speedy satellite manufacturing, said Chris Johnson, Maxar Space senior vice president and general manager.  

In terms of software-defined satellites, Maxar is taking a different approach from some of its competitors.

“There’s another place that we can go to add value to a certain portion of the market, just like we had value proposition in the GEO market before,” Johnson said. “We are going to leverage a different price point.”

The Space Force is expected to shift investments from large satellites like the Space Based Infrared System, which the Air Force acquired around 20 years ago to smaller spacecraft.

According to the the head of military space acquisitions, the era of massive satellites needs to be a thing of the past for the Department of Defense and he told the government and industry executives about this a week ago.

Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, since taking office has been insistent that reforms are needed in satellite procurements, including the transition to smaller satellites that can be built and launched within a three-year period, compared to a decade or longer for traditional large satellites. 

Calvelli spoke at the National Security Space Association’s defense and intelligence conference in a fireside chat with former DoD official Doug Loverro.

Echoing points he made in previous public appearances, Calvelli called for DoD to break from the past and embrace more agile ways to buy satellites in order to make United States of America systems more resilient to threats. Most space-based systems the U.S. military needs — for communications, space domain awareness, missile detection and tracking, navigation, weather and other applications — can be accomplished using small satellites, Calvelli said. 

“We are transforming from what’s been called ‘big juicy targets’ of the past to a more proliferated and more resilient architecture that can be counted on during times of crisis and conflict,” he said. 

Using commercially available satellite buses and components, DoD can build smaller spacecraft for operations in low, medium or geostationary Earth orbits, Calvelli said. “I see us building small satellites everywhere, regardless of whether it’s LEO MEO or GEO.”

Calvelli made the case that the traditional “big structures with lots of payloads on them” can be broken down into smaller satellites which would be harder for an enemy to target. That concept, also known as “disaggregation,” was advocated by some Air Force officials a decade ago but was largely rejected in favor of big satellites that, although expensive, can operate in orbit for decades. 

In light of recent advances in anti-satellite weapons developed by China and Russia, the Pentagon has to pivot to more resilient systems, Calvelli stressed. “I do believe that we can break apart the big behemoths in GEO and break them into smaller bite-sized chunks which is going to diversify the architecture and protect us more.”

‘Do not design new buses’

Since taking office seven months ago, Calvelli has noticed that Space Force program offices tend to design bespoke satellite buses, another practice that he wants to end. 

“If you need some new tech, that’s okay. But keep that development focused on the payload. Do not create new buses,” he said. 

There are plenty of commercially available buses to choose from, he said. “We love building new buses. We love building new bus components. We love doing new things that are already out there,” he said. “If you need to do some tech development, keep it minimal.”

There has been proposed constellation of six CubeSats to map lightning.

Cubespark CubeSats, equipped with high-resolution optical imagers and VHF sensors, would “map not only the flash locations, but map the full structure of it deep within convective clouds,” Jackson Remington of the Universities Space Research Association said Jan. 9 at the American Meteorological Society conference here.

Cubespark is designed to measure the global distribution of lightning, help explain the relationship between lightning and severe weather, and monitor lightning-produced nitrogen oxides, which have an impact on air quality.

The data currently comes from a variety of sources including terrestrial sensors and the Geostationary Lightning Mappers on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series. In low Earth orbit, a Lightning Image Sensor (LIS) designed by scientists at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and manufactured at NASA Marshall has been making observations since it was installed on the International Space Station in 2017.

“It’s important to point out that low-Earth orbit observations are at risk,” Remington said.

LIS is scheduled to stop gathering data from the space station later this year “and there’s no planned successor of a day-night lightning imager” in low-Earth orbit, Remington said. “So, we really need to get these up there,” he added.

In simulations, the Cubespark constellation was able to pinpoint the location of lightning to within one to two kilometers over a 300- to 600-kilometer swath from the tropics to high latitudes, Remington said.

NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office is supporting the Cubespark concept through its Instrument Incubator Program.

The space station offers an excellent vantage point to scientists studying TLEs. At about 250 miles up, it is much closer to these phenomena than a geosynchronous satellite. Further, the stations’ orbit allows for coverage of storms worldwide.

All this allows LIS and ASIM to produce a unique space-based dataset of thunderstorms and their effects, which in turn helps support other observational instruments. LIS for example has been used to calibrate instruments and verify data for the Geostationary Lightning Mapper on NASA and NOAA’s GOES satellites, and will also support the lightning imager on the European satellite, Meteosat Third Generation. This support helps make the data produced by these sensors the highest quality for serving the public.

From the space station, LIS can provide lightning data in near-realtime for the benefit of those on Earth. It can report lightning nearing dry areas of forests prone to wildfires. It’s integrated into the NOAA Aviation Weather Center’s operations, which provides weather forecasts and warnings to the US and international aviation and maritime communities. And, over time, it can map data points to help scientists observe changes to our climate over broad tracts of land and sea.

In short, studying lightning and its effects both below and above the clouds can have a big impact on how we view our planet.