NorthStar Earth and Space, a company planning a constellation of satellites to collect space situational awareness data, will launch its first satellites in mid-2023 with Virgin Orbit. NorthStar announced Oct. 27 that its first three satellites, 12-unit cubesats built by Spire, will be launched by Virgin Orbit in mid-2023. The companies did not disclose terms of the launch deal or where the launch, using Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne air-launch system, will take place. NorthStar announced in March a contract with Spire for those three satellites, part of Spire’s “space as a service” business model where it builds and operates satellites for other customers in addition to those for its own constellation. Spire announced Oct. 12 a launch agreement with Virgin Orbit covering multiple LauncherOne missions over several years, starting 2023. “We’re proud that NorthStar is leveraging our space services model and established space, ground, and web infrastructure to rapidly deploy its constellation,” Joel Sparks, co-founder and general manager for space services at Spire, said in a statement. The satellites are the first in a constellation of 24 spacecraft planned by NorthStar to collect commercial SSA data. NorthStar plans to place the satellites into eight orbital planes of three satellites each, scanning out from low Earth orbit to track satellites and debris. NorthStar’s agreement with Spire includes options for “dozens” of additional satellites.
NorthStar says its future fleet of satellites will track objects across all near-Earth orbits, including those in a highly elliptical orbit. Credit: NorthStar Earth and Space
NorthStar has not disclosed many technical details about the satellite system, including how many objects it can track or the accuracy of the SSA data they will produce. Stewart Bain, chief executive of NorthStar, said in an Oct. 28 talk at the NewSpace Europe conference in Luxembourg that the satellites will be able to track objects all the way out to geostationary orbit and cislunar space, but did not discuss specifics about those satellites’ capabilities.
The satellite constellation, he said, would complement existing SSA systems, citing as one example the Space Fence radar operated by the U.S. Space Force on Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific. “It doesn’t replace it. It contributes,” he said.
Partner agencies on the International Space Station program say they are in discussions about how they will use, and pay for, commercial space stations that will replace it. Representatives of several countries currently involved in the ISS said during a panel at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ ASCEND conference here Oct. 25 that they are looking at options for how to continue work they currently do on the ISS on the commercial space stations in low Earth orbit (LEO) NASA is helping develop to replace it at the end of the decade. “With the commercialization of LEO, it is really necessary to revisit our principles of doing cooperation,” said Peter Gräf, director of applications and science at the German space agency DLR. Germany is the biggest contributor to ESA’s share of the ISS and actively uses the station for fundamental and applied research. He said discussions among agencies and companies had started on how those arrangements would change with a commercial station. “We need to find ways to work together, certainly in other ways than we did before,” he said. “There are a lot of options available and the main players are in heavy discussions on that.” The ISS today relies extensively on barter arrangements among participating agencies, providing services to cover their share of operations of the station. Such arrangements are unlikely to work for commercial stations, however. “We need to find a new way of cooperating,” said Nicolas Maubert, space counselor at the French Embassy in the U.S. and representative of the French space agency CNES in the U.S., citing the challenges of extending current barter arrangements to commercial stations. “We need to put on the table every option.”
Current international partners on the ISS are looking at how they could use the commercial space stations being developed by American companies that will replace it. Credit: NASA
The simplest approach — direct payments from space agencies to the companies operating commercial stations — could face political obstacles. “The taxpayers in Europe don’t want to pay directly to private American companies,” he said.
He suggested Europe might consider developing its own space station as ESA members debate developing European human spaceflight capabilities. “Having autonomous capabilities is one of the solutions,” he said, one he acknowledged would depend on budgets.
Another option is for companies in other countries to be part of the U.S.-led ventures developing commercial stations. Thales Alenia, for example, is manufacturing modules for Axiom Space and builds components for Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft that will be adapted for use on its proposed station.
Japanese companies are also involved in those commercial space station initiatives, said Masami Onoda, director of the Washington office of the Japanese space agency JAXA. “We are very much looking forward to a partnership with commercial outposts.”
First, though, she said the ISS partners needed to finalize plans to extend operations of the station to 2030. “One of the arrangements I hope to see in the coming months is around the ISS. We need to first find out how we’re moving on with the ISS.”
“The bottom line for all is that there is a strong demand for capabilities in low Earth orbit,” Gräf said. “It’s quite clear there will be a human outpost in LEO, no matter what the future will bring.”
NASA researchers are making progress with developing an innovative battery pack that is lighter, safer, and performs better than batteries commonly used in vehicles and large electronics today. Their work – part of NASA’s commitment to sustainable aviation – seeks to improve battery technology through investigating the use of solid-state batteries for aviation applications such as electric propelled aircraft and Advanced Air Mobility. Unlike industry-standard lithium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries do not contain liquids, which can cause detrimental conditions, such as overheating, fire, and loss of charge over time – issues that may sound familiar to anyone who uses large electronics. Solid-state batteries do not experience these harmful conditions, and can hold more energy and perform better in stressful environments than standard lithium-ion batteries. Now, after a few years of successful work by a NASA activity called the Solid-state Architecture Batteries for Enhanced Rechargeability and Safety (SABERS) the research has generated substantial interest from government, industry, and academia. SABERS researchers have partnered with several organizations, as well as other projects within NASA Aeronautics, to continue developing its more resilient battery. “SABERS continues to exceed its goals,” said Rocco Viggiano, principal investigator for SABERS at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “We’re starting to approach this new frontier of battery research that could do so much more than lithium-ion batteries can. The possibilities are pretty incredible.”
The SABERS activity is developing a solid-state battery for use in aviation applications. In this image, NASA researchers John Connell and Yi Lin (seated) are using a cyclic voltameter to check the performance level of a brand-new cathode the SABERS team created for their solid-state battery.Credits: NASA
New Developments
Battery performance is a key aspect in the development of more sustainable electric aircraft. These batteries must effectively store the huge amount of energy required to power an aircraft all while remaining lightweight – a key requirement in aviation.
However, the amount of energy a battery can store is only one side of the equation. A battery must also discharge this energy at a rate sufficient to power large electronics, such as an electric aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicle.
Put another way: a battery could be described like a bucket. A battery’s energy (or capacity) is how much the bucket can hold, while its power is how fast the bucket can be emptied. To power an electric aircraft, the battery must discharge its energy, or empty its bucket, at an extraordinarily fast rate.
To that end, SABERS has experimented with innovative new materials yet to be used in batteries, which have produced significant progress in power discharge. During the past year, the team successfully increased their battery’s discharge rate by a factor of 10 – and then by another factor of 5 – inching researchers closer to their goal of powering a large vehicle.
This illustration depicts the inside of a cell used in SABERS’s solid-state battery, which is made primarily from sulfur and selenium. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, these cells can be stacked on top of one another without encasings to separate them. Credits: NASA
These new materials enable additional design changes.
The SABERS team realized solid-state architecture allowed them to change the construction and packaging of their battery to save weight and increase the energy it can store – the size of the battery’s bucket from the earlier analogy.
Instead of housing each individual battery cell inside its own steel casing, as liquid batteries do, all the cells in SABERS’s battery can be stacked vertically inside one casing. Thanks in part to this novel design, SABERS has demonstrated solid-state batteries can power objects at the huge capacity of 500 watt-hours per kilogram – double that of an electric car.
“Not only does this design eliminate 30 to 40 percent of the battery’s weight, it also allows us to double or even triple the energy it can store, far exceeding the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries that are considered to be the state of the art,” Viggiano said.
Safety is another key requirement for the use of batteries in electric aircraft. Unlike liquid batteries, solid-state batteries do not catch fire when they malfunction and can still operate when damaged, making them attractive for use in aviation.
SABERS researchers have tested their battery under different pressures and temperatures, and have found it can operate in temperatures nearly twice as hot as lithium-ion batteries, without as much cooling technology. The team is continuing to test it under even hotter conditions.
Partnerships and Future
This year, the main objective for SABERS was to show the battery’s properties meet its energy and safety targets while also demonstrating it can safely operate under realistic conditions and at maximum power.
SABERS has collaborated with several partners, including Georgia Tech, Argonne National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, to further this leading-edge research.
For example, the collaboration with Georgia Tech allowed researchers to utilize some different methodologies in their work and discover how they can improve their battery for practical use.
“Georgia Tech has a big focus on micromechanics of how the cell changes during operation. That helped us look at the pressures inside the battery, which then helped us improve the battery even more,” said Viggiano. “It also led us to understand from a practical standpoint how to manufacture a cell like this, and it led us to some other improved design configurations.”
SABERS also has engaged the expertise of multiple NASA centers and projects to achieve its objectives.
“We’ve had a lot of productive discussions on how others at NASA could leverage our work and potentially use our battery,” said Viggiano. “It’s been extremely rewarding to think about what could possibly come from it. We’ve seen SABERS grow from an idea we had at lunch one day to, potentially, an energy solution for aeronautics.”
SABERS is part of the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions project, which is designed to give NASA researchers the resources they need to determine whether their ideas to solve some of aviation’s biggest technical challenges are feasible, and perhaps worthy of additional pursuit within NASA or by industry.
NASA’s Artemis 1 mission and a Japanese lander are set to launch to the moon from Florida within days of each other in November. NASA announced Oct. 12 that it has scheduled the launch of the Artemis 1 mission for Nov. 14 from the Kennedy Space Center. The launch would take place during a 69-minute window that opens at 12:07 a.m. Eastern. Backup launch windows are available Nov. 16 at 1:04 a.m. Eastern and Nov. 19 at 1:45 a.m. Eastern, each two hours long. The agency said that inspections of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after it rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building Sept. 27 found “minimal work” needed to prepare them for another launch attempt. That work includes repairing minor damage to the rocket’s thermal protection system from earlier launch attempts and tests, as well as replacing or recharging batteries for the rocket’s flight termination system. NASA expects to have the vehicle ready to roll back to Launch Complex 39B as soon as Nov. 4. NASA rolled the rocket back to the VAB to protect it from Hurricane Ian as the storm cut across Florida. That ruled out launch opportunities in late September and early October, and the rollback meant NASA could not try again during a launch period open in the latter half of October. The new launch opportunities are near the start of the following launch period. NASA is pressing ahead with those opportunities despite them being at night. Agency officials earlier suggested they preferred to launch during the day for improved tracking of the SLS on its inaugural flight, but that would have required waiting until at least Nov. 22, in the latter half of the launch period.
The HAKUTO-R M1 lander, built by ispace, undergoes final preparations in Germany for shipment to Cape Canaveral for a Falcon 9 launch Nov. 9-15. Credit: ispace
The new launch date for Artemis 1 means it is now scheduled for launch within days of a commercial lunar lander mission. Japanese company ispace announced Oct. 12 that it plans to launch its first HAKUTO-R lander on a Falcon 9 between Nov. 9 and 15 from Cape Canaveral.
The M1 lander completed testing last month at a facility in Germany and it being prepared for shipment to the launch site. The lander is carrying a variety of payloads, including a small lunar rover called Rashid developed by the United Arab Emirates.
“For me this is a milestone on the road to realizing our vision, but I am already proud of our results,” Takeshi Hakamada, chief executive of ispace, said in a statement. “I look forward to watching the launch alongside all of our employees and those who have supported us.”
That schedule puts ispace ahead of two American companies also preparing lunar landers for launch. Both Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines had planned to launch their first lander missions before the end of the year, carrying payloads that included those provided by NASA though its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. However, Intuitive Machines said over the summer that the Falcon 9 launch of its IM-1 mission would slip to early 2023.
Astrobotic, flying on the inaugural mission of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, had been holding a 2022 launch until Oct. 10, when ULA announced it was delaying the launch to the first quarter of 2023 to give Astrobotic more time to complete its lander. It was not clear that Vulcan itself would be ready to launch this year because of delays in the delivery of the BE-4 engines that power its first stage.
In an Oct. 10 statement, John Thornton, chief executive of Astrobotic, said his company would release more details about its launch plans in the near future, but noted the lander has recently returned to the company’s Pittsburgh headquarters after completing pressure testing of its propulsion system.
“We are now proceeding with final spacecraft assembly which includes installation of the solar panel along with avionics, sensors, communications equipment and payloads, which are already tested and integrated with their corresponding decks,” he said. “As Peregrine begins its journey to the Moon in early 2023, it will be an incredible accomplishment for Astrobotic, the city of Pittsburgh, and the space industry as a whole.”
Tokyo-based ispace is not directly a part of the CLPS program. However, its U.S. office is part of a team led by Draper that won a CLPS award in July for a lander mission to the far side of the moon scheduled for launch in 2025.
Rising interest rates are making it more difficult for space startups to raise money, some warn, forcing them to seek alternative sources of funding. A series of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, intended to halt the post-pandemic spike in inflation, could have the side effect of driving funding out of risky venture investments, such as space, because of the higher rates offered elsewhere. “We’ve just come off 15 years of a near-zero interest rate environment that encouraged risk taking,” said Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payments company Shift4, during a Washington Post webinar Oct. 3. Isaacman is best known in the space industry for leading the Inspiration4 private astronaut mission on a Crew Dragon last year and backing the Polaris Program of private missions with SpaceX. “A lot of industries and a lot of companies were formed that, in more challenging times, would never have been able to survive. That’s not exclusive to space,” he said. “The space industry received a lot of capital, and I am definitely concerned they don’t continue to receive it.” He predicted that many space startups, as well as those in other technology sectors, will struggle to raise money. “A lot will go away, just like I think across tech and other industries. You’re going to see a lot of business failures as interest rates are now essentially going through the roof,” he said. “In that environment, you have to pick your battles as to where you deploy your capital from an investor’s perspective.”
While the SPAC market has cooled sharply, Intuitive Machines says it still represents the best way for it to access the capital it needs for its lunar landers and related projects. Credit: Intuitive Machines
In its latest quarterly report in July, Space Capital warned that the “macro environment” of higher interest rates and potential recession were having an impact on space investment. The number of deals and overall investment in the industry dropped by more than a third over the previous quarter, according to its assessment.
“While we believe the macro environment will continue to cause headwinds for some space companies, we do not believe that the space economy is at existential risk,” the report noted. However, “we expect the macro environment will disproportionately affect funding for capital-intensive Launch and Emerging Industries companies for the foreseeable future (1-3 years).”
Companies had, starting about two years ago, turned to mergers with special purpose acquisition corporations, or SPACs, as a means of raising money and going public. However, many of those deals failed to raise the expected funding as SPAC investors sought redemptions of their shares, and the companies themselves fared poorly on the market after going public.
Astra, a space launch company that went public through a SPAC merger in mid-2021, announced Oct. 7 it received a delisting warning from the Nasdaq exchange because its shares had traded at a price of below $1 for more than 30 days. Astra has 180 days to get the share price above $1 for at least 10 consecutive days. Astra shares closed at $0.52 Oct. 10, after trading as high as $13.58 in the last year.
Not every company is deterred from SPACs, though. Intuitive Machines, a company developing lunar landers and related technologies, announced Sept. 16 it would go public through a merger with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp., a SPAC on the Nasdaq.
“A SPAC is simply a mechanism to get into the public markets and we have a fantastic opportunity for retail investors, for the first time in history, to invest in space exploration,” argued Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, during an Oct. 6 webinar by IPO-Edge. “Now, with going public, we have access to the capital we need to essentially fund our business plan moving forward and continue our growth.”
He acknowledged “some variability” in SPAC transactions, which depend on how much of the capital raised by the SPAC is redeemed by shareholders rather than retained in the merged company. Inflection Point has $330 million in cash in trust, plus $105 million in separate lines of capital from other investors. Altemus didn’t explain how the company’s plans would change depending on how much they raise.
“SPACs are still very much an option, but we have to recognize that the complexion of SPAC deals and the SPAC market has changed,” said Nick S. Dhesi, a partner at Latham & Watkins LLP, during the IPO-Edge webinar. “There’s a focus on real revenues and contracts, fully funded business models and paths to profitability.”
He predicted it would be difficult for companies to go public through a more traditional initial public offering through the rest of the year. For private funding, “you’re seeing structured products — preferred equity, convertible debt — and well as strategic investors starting to step in to look for more vertical integration in their business.”
There has been increasing use of debt alongside, or in place of, equity investment in businesses. SpinLaunch’s $71 million Series B round, announced Sept. 20, included a mix of debt and equity, but the company did not disclose the ratio of the two. Astroscale, a Tokyo-based in-space servicing and debris removal company, announced Sept. 30 it raised 5 billion yen ($34.3 million) through a three-year term loan agreement with MUFG Bank, Ltd., leveraging a credit guarantee program by the Japanese government.
Isaacman, despite his concerns about overall funding, said he felt some companies were in good shape. “That’s not to say that the world will just be SpaceX,” he said. “I think there’s a couple really good space companies that have been smart on their capital allocation, they bought other businesses, they diversified their revenue streams, they’re more vertically integrated. I think they’ll succeed.” He didn’t give any examples of such companies.
But, he warned, “A lot of the space industry won’t be able to cut it.”
United Launch Alliance launched a pair of satellites for SES Oct. 4 that are vital to the operator’s bid to claim nearly $4 billion in C-band clearing proceeds. SES-20 and SES-21 lifted off 5:36 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and separated from their Atlas 5 rocket around six hours later. The lengthy mission dropped the Boeing-built satellites off at 35,888 kilometers above the equator at 1.9 degrees of inclination, much closer than a typical launch of spacecraft to geostationary transfer orbit. The companies said this will cut several months off the time it will take these satellites to reach their final orbit destinations using onboard electric propulsion. “We didn’t want to wait longer than we absolutely had to to get our hands on the satellites,” SES CEO Steve Collar said in a call with journalists, and SES-20 and SES-21 will “be operational in November, which given that we’re sitting here in October is pretty impressive.” Having already launched SES-22 in June as part of its shift out of C-band, the Oct. 4 mission leaves SES with just two more satellites it plans to deploy by early next year to stay on pace to claim the maximum payout from the Federal Communications Commission. SES is paying for these satellites with proceeds from the FCC’s C-band auction last year, which fetched more than $80 billion from Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and other U.S. wireless carriers who need more spectrum for 5G. In addition to covering costs to vacate C-band for terrestrial 5G, the FCC is offering satellite operators nearly $10 billion in total incentive payments if they can meet the regulator’s spectrum-clearing deadlines.
An Atlas 5 launches the SES-20 and SES-21 C-band replacement satellites to orbit Oct. 4. Credit: ULA
SES and Intelsat hold the majority of C-band in the United States and are in line for a maximum of $3.97 billion and $4.9 billion, respectively, if they can fully vacate the lower 300 MHz slice of C-band by Dec. 5, 2023, by moving broadcast customers to the upper 200 MHz of the band.
They unlocked more than $2 billion in combined proceeds from the FCC last year after meeting the regulator’s first major C-band clearing deadline, however, hitting the regulator’s final deadline will require new satellites in orbit.
SES loses C-band battle against Intelsat
SES lost its bid Sept. 30 to convince a court overseeing Intelsat’s recent bankruptcy that it was owed $1.8 billion over a broken agreement to equally share C-band clearing proceeds.
SES brought the claim to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia two months after Intelsat filed for Chapter 11 in May 2020, and was one of its largest creditors.
The operator made the claim to cover damages resulting from Intelsat’s departure from a pact to equally share the compensation they would get from the FCC.
Intelsat argued the agreement was nullified once the FCC decided to reallocate satellite C-band spectrum to 5G cellular network carriers via a public auction, rather than a private process run by the satellite operators.
After more than two years of legal action, the court decided Oct. 30 to sustain Intelsat’s objection and disallow the claims from SES.
In a Memorandum Opinion, Judge Keith Phillips wrote that SES could have objected to the FCC’s draft order if it thought its split was unfair.
The satellite operator could have also “refused to participate in the accelerated clearing; it did neither,” he added.
“In short, the Court does not see anything ‘unjust’ about allowing the split of accelerated relocation payments set by the FCC based on objective criteria to determine the amounts available to SES and Intelsat.”
SES spokesperson Suzanne One said it is “disappointed with the ruling,” and “is reviewing with outside counsel its options to appeal.”
Intelsat, which emerged from bankruptcy in February and is looking to use C-band proceeds to pay off more debt and fuel its return to growth, “is pleased to have resolved this matter with a ruling in our favor based on the clear and convincing evidence presented,” Intelsat spokesperson Clay McConnell said.
Merger implications
The court’s decision likely lessens the need to rush any merger talks between the two satellite operators.
The Financial Times reported Aug. 4. that SES and Intelsat were in active talks about combining their companies amid consolidation deals elsewhere in the industry.
While SES and Intelsat have not explicitly commented on the rumor, they have each touted the benefits of satellite operator consolidation to help rationalize the industry.
“If the opportunity of consolidation is there, and it makes sense for our shareholders, we’ll grab it and execute hard,” SES CEO Steve Collar in a Sept. 14 SpaceNews interview during World Satellite Business Week in Paris.
“If not, we’ve got a fantastic plan … using the cash flows that we’re generating from video to invest meaningfully in” SES’ data-focused networks business.
More replacement satellites needed
SES and Intelsat have ordered 13 C-band replacement satellites between them to clear the spectrum for mobile operators.
SpaceX is slated to launch two more for SES on Falcon 9 rocket toward the end of the year.
Collar said in the media call that “we may end up pushing into early next year depending on the manifest,” but the satellites are essentially “more or less ready to go.”
The operator’s remaining work to vacate C-band following this launch will be on the ground as the operator moves customers and filters antennas across the United States.
SES ordered six C-band replacement satellites in total, and the sixth will be used as a ground spare.
Intelsat has ordered seven satellites for its C-band clearing plan, with none of them intended as ground spares, and has lined up Arianespace and SpaceX for launches starting Oct. 6.
SpaceX is slated to launch Galaxy 33 and Galaxy 34 on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 7:07 p.m. Eastern.
