Tag: D-Orbit

British rocket start-up Orbex wins two-launch contract from Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit

9:10 am

The British rocket start-up Orbex, which hopes to complete its first test orbital launch of its Prime rocket this year, after years of regulatory delays, has gotten a two-launch contract from the Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit.

The contract appears to be part of Europe’s effort to have its European payloads launch on European rockets. Previously D-Orbit tugs have mostly been launched by SpaceX because the only available European rockets, Ariane-6 and Vega-C, have either not been operational or available. Moreover, all these rockets are too big for D-Orbit’s tugs, which thus have to fly as secondary payloads.

Orbex’s Prime rocket is small, and so the tugs can be launched as the primary payload. The rocket however is not yet operational, unlike for example Rocket Lab’s small Electron rocket. The decision to go with Orbex’s untested rocket suggests Europe is forcing D-Orbit to sign with a European rocket company.

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ESA awards D-Orbit €119.6 million contract to complete Europe’s first robotic service mission

9:25 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today awarded the European orbital tug company D-Orbit a €119.6 million contract to fly Europe’s first robotic mission to extend the life of an already orbiting satellite.

Referred to as RISE, the mission will demonstrate the D-Orbit GEA satellite life extension vehicle’s ability to dock with a geostationary satellite, maneuver the satellite, and then release it. After this sequence is verified, ESA’s involvement in its operation will come to an end. The vehicle will then move into an operational phase with D-Orbit offering a life extension service to active geostationary satellite operators.

The mission is targeting a 2028 launch, though no specific target satellite as yet has been identified.

This project is very similar to the Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV) robotic missions of Northrop Grumman, which has been flown twice successfully. I guess ESA needed to see it work before it would consider doing its own mission. Moreover, ESA probably wanted to sign up a European company to do it, and until now no such company existed. D-Orbit has already completed fourteen orbital tug missions with seven more scheduled for 2025. This mission extension project however will be a significant leap forward in its capabilities, funded by ESA.

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Orbital tug startup D-Orbit raises another 150 million euros

8:44 am

The orbital tug company D-Orbit announced today that it was able to extend its more recent round of fund-raising by 50 million euros, and raise a total of 150 million in private investment capital instead.

Japan’s Marubeni Corp. led the Series C round. Marubeni has exclusive rights to distribute D-Orbit’s services in Japan in Southeast Asia, according to the news release.

New and existing investors participating in the round include: Avantgarde, CDP Venture Capital, Iberis Capital, Indaco Venture Partners, the European Innovation Council, Neva, Phaistos Investment Fund, Primo Ventures and Seraphim Space Investment Trust. Also joining the round was a consortium led by United Ventures that included the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund.

I call the company a “startup” in the headline, but that probably is now incorrect. It already has flown fourteen orbital tug missions, with seven more scheduled in 2025. At this point it is well established, and could extend this most recent funding round.

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D-Orbit newest orbital tug deploys four smallsats

10:24 am

The Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit has now successfully deployed four smallsats from its newest tug, having been launched on August 16, 2024 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The tug still has one more satellite to deploy, after which it will remain in orbit as it also carries four additional customer “hosted” payloads that are using the tug itself as their service module.

This is D-Orbit’s second demo mission, the first flying in 2023. It also appears be completely successful, which puts this company in an excellent position to garner future contracts from many small satellite companies. It is also a partner in a $256 million Italian project to test in-orbit robotic satellite repair.

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Nova Scotia spaceport gets another launch contract

9:55 am

Maritime Launch Services, which is building a spaceport in Nova Scotia and hopes to offer its own rocket services to put satellites in orbit, has obtained what it claims could be a $1 billion contract with an unnamed European orbital tug company.

The only two European orbital tug companies that closely fit the description provided by Maritime officials are D-Orbit or Exolaunch. The latter had had a contract with Virgin Orbit to launch as many as 20 of its satellites. Coming less than one day after Virgin Orbit’s assets were sold off, this announcement suggests Exolaunch has replaced Virgin Orbit with this deal.

Unlike other spaceports, Maritime isn’t merely providing a launch site for rocket companies. Instead the company will also launch smallsats itself, using either Ukraine’s Cyclone-4M rocket or a British-made startup rocket dubbed Skyrora.

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Italy awards $256 million contract for testing in-orbit robotic satellite servicing

8:59 am

The new colonial movement: The Italian Space Agency yesterday issued a $256 million contract to a partnership of several private European companies — most of which are Italian — to fly a mission testing a variety of in-orbit robotic satellite servicing capabilities.

Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales of France and Leonardo of Italy, said the group is contracted to design, develop, and qualify a spacecraft capable of performing a range of autonomous robotic operations on satellites in low Earth orbit.

The company did not disclose details about these satellites or specifics about the mission, but said the servicer would have a dexterous robotic arm and test capabilities that include refueling, component repair or replacement, orbital transfer, and atmospheric reentry. The servicer will be launched with a target satellite, Thales Alenia Space spokesperson Cinzia Marcanio said, and both will be fitted with an interface for a refueling mission.

The partnership also includes the Italian companies Telespazio, Avio, and D-Orbit.

The significance of this deal is that Italy has gone outside the European Space Agency (ESA) to do it. For decades all European projects would be developed and flown through ESA. Italy appears to be have finally realized that it does not need that partnership, that in fact that partnership acts to hinder its own companies by requiring any mission to use companies from other nations. This deal instead keeps almost everything inside Italy.

We have seen a similar pattern in both Germany and the United Kingdom. The former has been working to encourage private German rocket companies, independent of ESA. The latter is doing the same in the UK, while also encouraging private British spaceports to launch those rockets.

These efforts strongly suggest that ESA’s monumental failure with the Ariane-6 — which is years late and will cost too much to fly — has been causing its member nations to rethink that partnership, and increasingly go it alone. ESA failed to provide them a competitive alternative for getting their payloads into orbit. They are now looking for ways to do it themselves.

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SpaceX successfully launches 49 Starlink satellites and a D-Orbit space tug

9:44 am

SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch 49 Starlink satellites as well as a D-Orbit space tug carrying one of its own customer’s satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage successfully completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The D-Orbit tug with its four payloads has also successfully deployed.

The 2023 launch race:

7 SpaceX
5 China
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan

American private enterprise leads China 8 to 5 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 8 to 6.

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Orbital tug company signs launch agreement with German rocket startup Isar Aerospace

9:24 am

The German rocket startup company, Isar Aerospace, has now signed a launch agreement with a French orbital tug company, Exotrail, to put multiple tugs into orbit over a five year period.

The companies announced Nov. 3 they signed a launch services agreement to launch Exotrail’s spacevan vehicle on Isar’s Spectrum rocket on multiple missions between 2024 and 2029. The launches will take place from Andøya, Norway, and Kourou, French Guiana. The companies did not disclose a specific number of launches or the value of the agreement.

Exotrail will apparently act as the agent to get the satellite customer by providing that customer transportation to the desired orbit after deployment from Isar’s rocket.

This is the second orbital tug launch contract that Isar has won, with the first from the Italian company D-Orbit. Both deals will fly on Isar’s rocket Spectrum, which it hopes to launch for the first time next year.

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Merger deal between Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit and Breeze canceled

8:52 am

Capitalism in space: The merger deal between the Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit and the special purpose acquisition investment company (SPAC) Breeze has been canceled.

The Italian company had hoped to raise $185 million from the deal to expand staff and accelerate investments in ION Satellite Carrier, its orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) that completed its first commercial mission in late 2020.

However, “financial markets have changed substantially” since the deal was announced Jan. 27, Breeze CEO Douglas Ramsey said, amid rising interest rates, soaring inflation, and an ongoing war in Ukraine. “As we look ahead, we remain focused on identifying another value creating opportunity for Breeze shareholders,” Ramsey added.

A SPAC is a shell company designed solely to gather investment capital that is then used to either buy or merge with another company. In the process the company that is taken over goes public, its stock available on the stock market for trade. There have been a number of such takeovers in the space sector in the past few years, but most have turned out poorly for the investors in those SPACs, as noted in the article:

Of the nine space companies that went public through SPAC mergers in 2021, only Rocket Lab’s shares finished the year trading above their price when the merger closed. [Ed: both Virgin Galactic and Astra are examples of these failures.]

Demand for new SPAC deals has also been waning amid declining investor appetite for risk and increasing regulatory scrutiny over how these blank check firms operate. More than 40 SPAC mergers have been canceled so far this year, reported Bloomberg.

To put it more bluntly, investors have found these SPACs to be poor investments, and are bailing from them. This is likely what happened at Breeze, thus forcing the cancellation of the deal with D-Orbit.

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Kepler signs up D-Orbit’s orbital tug for its next two satellites

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: The Canadian company Kepler — which already has nineteen satellites in orbit providing data communications — will use the orbital tug developed by the start-up D-Orbit and dubbed ION on its next two satellites.

After separating from the launch vehicle, D-Orbit intends to use ION to drop Kepler’s satellites off at a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) between 500 and 600 kilometers. Each satellite is the size of six cubesats, a standard smallsat form factor measuring 10 centimeters on each side.

Kepler previously had a deal to use Momentus’s Vigoride tug, but delays and further in-orbit technical problems with that tug has apparently forced it to switch to D-Orbit.

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German smallsat rocket startup signs orbital tug startup as launch customer

9:54 am

Capitalism in space: Isar, one of three German smallsat rocket companies hoping to launch their own rockets, has won a launch contract from D-Orbit, one of three companies building orbital space tugs designed to provide in-orbit transportation to cubesats.

Isar Aerospace announced today that it has entered into a firm launch services agreement with space infrastructure pioneer D-Orbit. The company’s launch vehicle Spectrum, which is developed for small and medium satellites and satellite constellations, will launch D-Orbit’s ION Satellite Carrier as a primary customer to a Sun-synchronous orbit from its launch site in Andøya, Norway with a launch term starting in 2023.

This is Isar’s third launch contract. The company has also raised almost $200 million in investment capital in the past year and a half.

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