Tag: commercial

Axiom signs deal with Poland and ESA to send Polish astronaut to Axiom’s future space station

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: Axiom last week signed an agreement jointly with Poland and the European Space Agency (ESA) to send Polish astronaut to Axiom’s space station, expected to launch sometime in 2026.

This was the second European astronaut Axiom has signed a deal to fly to space, with the ESA in both cases providing support.

In April 2023, Axiom Space and the Swedish National Space Agency signed a letter of intent to send an ESA astronaut to the ISS. Through this agreement, the upcoming Axiom Space mission, Ax-3 now targeting launch in January 2024, will be the first commercial mission to the ISS to include an ESA project astronaut.

The date for the flight of the Polish astronaut was not announced. Nor is it clear whether this astronaut will fly to Axiom’s first module, attached to ISS, or wait until Axiom’s completes its station and separates from ISS entirely.

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SpaceX launches another 22 Starlink satellites

10:27 pm

In what is turning into routine clockwork, SpaceX tonight completed its fourth launch in only the first ten days of August, placing 22 Starlink satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its ninth flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their tenth and eleventh flights respectively. At the time of posting the satellites themselves had not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

55 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 63 to 33, and the entire world combined 63 to 55. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the entire world (excluding American companies) 55 to 55.

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Update on the development of a new first stage for Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket

9:01 am

Link here. The first stage of the Antares rocket has previously relied on Russian engines in a Ukrainian-built body. The Ukraine War made getting both impossible, and thus Northrop Grumman hired Firefly to provide it a new first stage, presently targeting mid-2025 for its first flight. In the meantime in order to meet its contractual obligations with NASA, it has hired SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to fly the next three Cygnus freighters to ISS.

The report at the link gets some interesting details about Firefly’s engines and first stage. Both will raise the payload capabilities of Antares, which as yet has failed to garner any commercial payloads outside of Northrop’s own Cygnus capsule. That increase in capability might make it more appealing to commercial satellite companies.

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Smothers Brothers – Hippie Chick Clip

6:01 pm

An evening pause: A wonderful moment from the 1960s, performed brilliantly by actress Leigh French and resulting in some wonderful and gentle satire of the hippie culture of the time. Context is also important, because the Smothers Brothers were constantly having problems with their television censors.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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Ella Roberts – Wild Mountain Thyme

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I normally dislike music videos like this one, with their fake drama and stagey lip-synched performance, but this song is so beautiful and the visuals match so well that I gladly make an exception this time, especially because I have wanted to post this song as a pause for years, but never could find a version I liked.

Hat tip Alton Blevins.

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NOAA lifts many restrictions on the release of commercial Earth observation images

3:09 pm

As part of a 2020 revision by Commerce to reduce regulations on satellites that monitor the Earth, NOAA has now lifted many of the restrictions it placed on the release of high resolution commercial Earth observation images.

NOAA said it lifted 39 restrictions on an unspecified number of licenses. Those restrictions include a reduction of global imaging restrictions for certain imaging modes and removal of restrictions on non-Earth imaging and rapid revisit. It also removed all temporary conditions on X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery.

One of the companies that benefits from the removal of the conditions is SAR imaging company Umbra. The company announced Aug. 7 that, with the removal of the conditions, it can now offer SAR images to customers at a resolution of 16 centimeters, compared to no better than 25 centimeters under the old license conditions. “This means that we are finally able to offer customers the highest resolution images that our satellites are capable of capturing, setting the stage for even further expansion of products to customers,” said Gabe Dominocielo, Umbra’s co-founder and president, in a company statement.

The revision to the regulations, put in place in 2020, had been instigated by the Trump administration, and has apparently been left untouched by the Biden administration, at least up until now.

For the satellite companies it means they are much freer to produce that best imagery, and thus compete more successfully. For customers, it means that they will now have access the best imagery, in open competition. For news outlets attempting to report on things like the Ukraine War, for example, this ability will make it possible to improve the accuracy of the coverage.

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Startup orbital tug company signs deal from startup solar panel company

9:26 am

The new orbital tug company Atomos has now signed a deal with the new solar panel company, Solestial, to use the latter company’s solar panels in its tugs.

Neither company has yet flown anything in space, though both have contracts and demo missions scheduled.

Atomos plans to test a small Solestial photovoltaic panel on an orbital transfer vehicle demonstration set to launch on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare flight in early 2024. Solestial also will supply large solar blankets for two Atomos’ solar-electric OTVs slated to begin flying in late 2024 or early 2025.

Once again, these two companies illustrate the growth in the satellite industry produced by the lowering of launch costs. With less capital required to get to orbit, there is a larger margin for profit, thus encouraging companies with new ideas.

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Japanese startup signs deal to provide its smallsat thrusters to South Korean university

9:20 am

Pale Blue, a Japanese startup which focuses on building water-vapor thrusters for cubesats, has signed a deal with Yonsei University in South Korea to provide that school smallsat thrusters for the satellites built by its students.

“Our mission aims for demonstrating cutting-edge laser communication, orbital maneuvering and formation-keeping,” Sang-Young Park, a Yonsei University astronomy professor, said in a statement. “These thrusters perfectly meet our requirements and offer the advantage of being not only environmentally friendly, but also free from regulatory constraints.”

Pale Blue proved its Resistojet thruster in orbit for the first time in March on a Sony Corp. Star Sphere satellite. Pale Blue plans to establish mass production of Resistojet thrusters to reduce the cost and lead time for potential customers in the United States, Europe and Asia, said Yuichi Nakagawa, Pale Blue co-founder and chief technology officer.

The company is also developing both an ion and hybrid thruster for satellites, and is another example of how the lowering of launch costs has encouraged the arrival of many new space companies doing many different things.

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Dish and Echostar to merge

9:15 am

The communications satellite company Echostar is now merging with the direct broadcast company Dish. From the press release:

The transaction combines DISH Network’s satellite technology, streaming services and nationwide 5G network with EchoStar’s premier satellite communications solutions, creating a global leader in terrestrial and non-terrestrial wireless connectivity. Both companies have strong momentum, highlighted by DISH’s 5G wireless network that now covers more than 70 percent of the U.S. with full commercialization underway and the successful launch of EchoStar’s JUPITER 3 satellite with significant available capacity for converged terrestrial and non-terrestrial services. The combined company will be well-positioned to deliver a broad set of communication and content distribution capabilities, accelerating the delivery of satellite and wireless connectivity solutions desired by customers.

This merger is I think part of the consolidation that is going on among the older players in the communications satellite industry as they struggle to deal with the competition from the new satellites constellations of Starlink and OneWeb.

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Momentus is now selling a version of its orbital tug simply as a service module for satellites

9:09 am

The orbital tug company Momentus has discovered that it can make money selling a version of its orbital tug simply as a service module, or bus, for commercial and military satellites.

The company announced Aug. 2 that it was now offering customers a bus called the M-1000. The bus is similar to the Vigoride orbital transfer vehicle that Momentus has flown three times so far, but without the water-based propulsion system it uses for changing orbits.

The bus emerged from limitations flying hosted payloads on Vigoride, which remain attached to the tug rather than deployed as satellites. Rob Schwarz, chief technology officer at Momentus, said in an interview that the company started gauging interest a year ago in hosted payloads on Vigoride, including from U.S. government agencies. “What we’re finding is that a lot of government customers don’t really want to borrow the bus and lease it, but instead they want to own it,” he said. “Also, in some cases, because of the sensitivity of the payloads they don’t want to share it with other users.”

That led Momentus to instead consider a version of Vigoride that would be a satellite bus sold to customers instead of provided as a service. It uses many of the same subsystems, like avionics and power, as Vigoride. Changes include improved pointing and options for third-party chemical and electric propulsion systems.

This is just good and smart business practice. Momentus has a product that doesn’t appeal to some customers, in its designed iteration. Rather than trying to deny reality, the company quickly accepted the situation and revised its product in a somewhat easy way so it can be sold to those customers.

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