Japanese Earth observation company Axelspace has raised nearly $44 million to both expand its satellite constellation and provide smallsats for other applications. The Tokyo-based company announced Dec. 21 that it raised 6.24 billion yen ($43.9 million) in a Series D round from several Japanese companies and venture funds. The company, which last raised 2.58 billion yen in a Series C round in 2021, has brought in 14.3 billion yen since its founding in 2008. The company currently operates five microsatellites that provide medium-resolution imagery through a service it calls AxelGlobe. Four of those satellites launched in 2021, three years after its first satellite. Axelspace said the new funding will support expansion of its satellite constellation but did not provide details about the plans. The Series D round will also go towards an initiative Axelspace announced in 2022 called AxelLiner, where the company will produce microsatellites for other customers. The goal of the service is to provide a “one-stop service” for the production, launch and operations of smallsats for other customers. At the time of the AxelLiner announcement, the company said it would work with two other Japanese firms, Misumi Group Ltd. and Yuki Holdings Inc., in an alliance for mass production of smallsats. The first demonstration satellite of that effort is scheduled for launch in early 2024. “With this financing, we hope to further solidify the business foundations of both AxelGlobe and AxelLiner services and to establish ourselves as a leading player in providing comprehensive microsatellite solutions,” Yuya Nakamura, president and chief executive of Axelspace, said in a statement about the financing round.
In addition to building satellites for its own Earth observation constellation, Axelspace is offering satellites for other customers. Credit: Axelspace
Axelspace is part of a trend of companies that initially built satellites for their own businesses but now offer them to others. Spire, which operates a large cubesat constellation for weather and tracking data, has won several customers for its “space as a service” business line, offering satellites and related capabilities.
Several Axelspace investors cited that move into satellite manufacturing and services as a key factor in their decisions to participate in the round. “We have decided to invest in the space industry, a new growth engine for Japan, and specifically in Axelspace,” said Jun Takahashi, president of SMBC Venture Capital Management Co., lead investor in the round. “We are impressed by its achievement in pioneering the space industry and hold high expectations for their future global contributions as a satellite manufacturer and a data service provider.”
“We have decided to invest in Axelspace, a pioneer in the field of microsatellites, in the hope that they will become a global unicorn company from Japan and take the company to the next level,” said Yasuhiko Yurimoto, chief executive of Global Brain Corporation, another investor in Axelspace.
The funding round is the latest sign of growing investor interest in Japan for entrepreneurial space companies. Satellite servicing company Astroscale, based in Tokyo with operations in several countries, has raised more than $376 million, including a $76 million Series G round in February. That round included a strategic investment from Japanese satellite manufacturer Mitsubishi Electric.
In April, Japanese lunar lander developer ispace went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange shortly before its first lander crashed on final approach to the lunar surface. It is working on a second lander scheduled to launch in 2024.
Another Japanese company, iQPS, went public on the same exchange Dec. 6, raising $24 million. The company said the funding would support its development of a constellation of synthetic aperture radar imaging satellites.
Japan’s SLIM robotic spacecraft entered lunar orbit Dec. 25, setting up a moon landing attempt scheduled for Jan. 19. SLIM completed a roughly three-minute-long lunar orbit insertion burn at 2:51 a.m. Eastern (0751 UTC), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced Christmas Day. SLIM is now in a 600 x 4,000-kilometer polar lunar orbit, as planned. The spacecraft is currently in a normal condition, JAXA stated. It will soon begin gradually lowering its orbit in preparation for landing. The landing attempt is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. Eastern (1500 UTC) Jan. 19, landing around 20 minutes later. The lander will aim to set down within a 100 meters of its target point on the slope of the mid-latitude Shioli crater. SLIM launched Sept. 6 on a H-2A rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center along with the XRISM space telescope. SLIM spacecraft entered low Earth orbit and began a series of orbit-raising maneuvers as part of its circuitous voyage to the moon. It made a translunar injection burn Sept. 30, making a lunar flyby Oct. 4. This set the spacecraft on a long, looping, propellant-saving journey to the moon, leading to lunar orbit insertion on Christmas Day. SLIM will next gradually lower its apolune, or farthest point from the moon, and enter a circular orbit at an approximately 600-kilometer-altitude in mid-January, according to JAXA.
Perilune will then be lowered, reaching a 15-km-altitude orbit Jan. 19 Japan time, ready for the Jan. 19 landing. SLIM will begin to decelerate from a speed of around 1,700 meters per second at that point.
Five crushable, 3D-printed aluminum lattice landing legs will help the lander absorb the of impact of touch down and settle on the sloped rim of the 300-meters-wide Shioli crater.
A successful SLIM landing would make Japan the fifth country to soft land on the moon. In August India became the fourth nation to achieve the feat with its high latitude Chandrayaan-3 mission landing.
The main objective of SLIM is to demonstrate a highly-accurate lunar soft-landing with a lightweight architecture. It will use a vision-based navigation system and carries observational data from Japan’s SELENE orbiter launched in 2007. This system will be used to identify its landing zone during its autonomous descent and landing. It also carries a laser range finder for the final stages of descent.
Beyond the landing attempt itself, the spacecraft is designed to spend the remainder of the lunar day on the surface conducting experiments. SLIM carries a Multi-Band Camera (MBC) to assess the composition of Shioli crater by analyzing the spectra of sunlight reflected off its surface. Teams are particularly looking for the presence of the mineral olivine, which may have been ejected from beneath the moon’s crust.
SLIM is also carrying a pair of small, innovative rovers. Lunar Excursion Vehicle 1 (LEV-1) uses a hopping mechanism, while LEV-2 is a baseball-sized, spherical rover. Both carry cameras and science payloads.
The mission could lead to lower cost exploration efforts in the future, according to JAXA. The accuracy of landings will be useful for accessing areas of high scientific interest instead of more general, safer landing zones.
The spacecraft has a dry mass of 200 kilograms and 700-730 kg wet mass at launch. The expected development cost was 18 billion yen ($120 million).
A delegation from the French Space Agency CNES visited Colorado and Texas last week to expand ties between French and American aerospace companies. The officials, who jokingly refer to themselves as France’s NewSpace Musketeers, plan to establish virtual hubs in Denver and Houston for Connect by CNES, a government initiative to spur space-related innovation. “We want to create jobs in the U.S. and jobs in France,” Francois Alter, CNES deputy chief strategy officer, told SpaceNews. “We want to be the wedding planner to support this growing ecosystem with strong partnerships between U.S. and French companies.” France and the United States have longstanding civil and military space ties, which have deepened in recent years. In addition, France’s vibrant NewSpace sector is growing with an average of one startup established per week. Government support for the NewSpace ecosystem is strong. The national investment plan France 2030 directs 1.5 billion euros ($1.64 billion) towards investment in space technologies over five years.
Connect by CNES leaders pose with a replica of an International Space Station module at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Credit: Connect by CNES
“We have ammunition to make this ecosystem go,” said Emmanuel de Lipkowski, CNES senior advisor and a French Space Command Reserve officer.
Space Symposium France Booth
Connect by CNES was established in 2018 to provide startups with technical expertise, funding, software, incubators, accelerators and introductions to prime contractors and government space agencies. With many French startups maturing, Connect by CNES is looking for international partners, beginning in the United States.
To help French startups establish ties in the U.S., a French delegation met in Denver Dec. 11 and 12 with representatives of Colorado companies, government agencies and academic institutions. The visit paves the way for some 30 to 40 French entrepreneurs to meet with potential partners in April during the National Space Foundation’s 39th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.
“There is already a lot of collaboration between French and U.S. companies,” Alter said. “We met companies that already have French suppliers, French partners or French customers. Some of them want to make more business in Europe.”
Connect by CNES can help U.S. companies by serving as the “point of entrance to the European ecosystem,” Alter said.
Business France, which has seven offices in the United States, also helps U.S. companies “understand the French market and identify French and European market incentives,” said Nicolas Maubert, CNES representative and space attaché for the French Embassy in Washington.
Speed and Resiliency
Through international partnerships, CNES seeks to improve the resiliency of its space sector.
“We have to make our supply chain much more resilient,” Lipkowski said, citing geopolitical tensions.
The French Air and Space Force and French Space Command “have excellent collaboration with the U.S. military,” Lipowski said. “The collaboration is growing. We are here to make it better and to find better opportunities.”
Partnerships also help space companies keep up with the rapid pace of innovation, Alter said. “In this NewSpace era, you need to move fast. That means that you must find the best suppliers, the best off-the-shelf components and the best equipment.”
Connect by CNES’ Houston hub will be oriented toward human spaceflight and moon programs including Artemis. The Denver hub will focus on military space, cybersecurity, space medicine and educational exchanges.
China sent the classified Yaogan-41 optical satellite towards the geostationary belt Friday using the country’s largest launch vehicle. The sixth Long March 5 rocket lifted off from the coastal Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 8:41 a.m. Eastern (1341 UTC) Dec. 15. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced launch success around an hour later. CASC revealed the payload to be the Yaogan-41 (“remote sensing-41”) satellite. A new, elongated 18.5-meter-long, 5.2-meter-diameter payload fairing shrouded the spacecraft. Previous fairings were 12.3 meters long. CASC revealed that its China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) subsidiary built Yaogan-41 but provided no images nor further details. State news agency Xinhua described the satellite as an optical remote sensing satellite. “The satellite will be used in land survey, crop yield estimation, environmental management, meteorological warning and forecasting, and comprehensive disaster prevention and reduction,” Xinhua stated. Outside observers however assess Yaogan series satellites to be designated for military purposes. The classified nature of the mission suggests Yaogan-41 is for at least partial military use.
The sixth Long March 5 lifts off from Wenchang, Dec. 15, sending Yaogan-41 into GTO. Credit: Ourspace
U.S. Space Force space domain awareness cataloged the spacecraft in a 195 by 35,815-kilometer orbit inclined by 19.51 degrees.
The successful launch adds to growing Chinese on-orbit remote sensing capabilities. Should Yaogan-41 take up a position in geostationary orbit, at about 35,786 kilometers above the equator, it will remain in a fixed position relative to the Earth’s surface. This will allow it to conduct continuous observation of the same geographic area.
This vantage point would allow it to constantly view about one-third of the Earth’s surface. Geostationary optical data would be useful for security, meteorology, climate studies and environmental monitoring purposes.
The mission could be a military follow-up to the civilian Gaofen-4 satellite launched in 2015. The Gaofen-4 GEO optical satellite launched on the much smaller Long March 3B and provides 50-meter-resolution images.
CAST produces the DFH-5 large satellite bus for GEO communications and remote sensing. Its size and mass requires the Long March 5—which can carry 14,000 kg to GTO—to launch it. The DFH-5 Shijian-20 satellite has a mass of up to 8,000 kilograms. DFH-5 satellites have a lifetime of up to 15 years.
The Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has produced four-meter-diameter aspheric silicon carbide (SiC) mirrors. SiC mirrors actively serve in space remote sensing.
CIOMP is also involved in developing Xuntian, a Hubble-class space telescope, expected to join the Tiangong space station in orbit in 2025.
In August CASC launched a geosynchronous orbit radar satellite, further adding to its GEO observation capabilities.
The Long March 5 launched for the first time in late 2016. Its second flight in 2017 failed. The rocket was grounded for 900 days as further testing setbacks required a redesign of troublesome turbopumps. The rocket has since successfully launched Shijian-20, China’s first independent interplanetary mission—the Tianwen-1 orbiter and rover mission to Mars—and the 2020 Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission.
The five-meter-diameter, 874-ton rocket is currently China’s largest. Its 5B low Earth orbit variant constructed the country’s space station. The Long March 5 is also the basis for the under-development Long March 10, which will use upgraded versions of its YF-100 kerosene-liquid engines and three five-meter-diameter cores.
The Yaogan-41 launch followed a day after China sent its experimental reusable spacecraft into orbit for the third time. The spacecraft entered a 333 to 348 kilometer altitude orbit, inclined at 50 degrees.
Friday’s launch was China’s 61st of 2023, with worldwide orbital launches numbering close to 200. Notable Chinese launches include crew and cargo missions to Tiangong, satellite internet test satellites and the first commercial liquid propellant launches.
CASC aimed to launch more than 60 times this year but, with commercial launch providers accounting for 15 launches, appears to be falling someway short of this stated goal. However CASC has not suffered a launch failure since 2020.
The first NASA-funded small satellite for exoplanet science is continuing to gather data well beyond its expected lifetime. The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment, known as CUTE, a six-unit cubesat equipped with a telescope to funnel data to a spectrograph, traveled to sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit in September 2021 as a secondary payload on the NASA- U.S. Geological Survey Landsat 9 Earth-observation mission. CUTE was designed to operate in space for at least eight months. Twenty-seven months later, the satellite’s onboard instruments still are observing the dramatic atmospheric loss of “hot jupiters,” gas giants orbiting very close to bright stars. “This atmospheric escape is incredibly fast,” said Kevin France, CUTE principal investigator at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), which assembled, tested and operates the satellite. “The materials are coming out so fast that they are dragging all the heavy elements out of the atmosphere with them.” Based on CUTE’s success, two additional NASA-funded, LASP-led missions have adopted similar mission and instrument designs. “CUTE’s been a great success, particularly given that we didn’t really know if we could do it for the amount of money that we proposed,” France told SpaceNews at the American Geophysical Union conference here. Lessons learned from CUTE are helping researchers “figure out how to build small spacecraft, how to build small instruments and how to have a student-led team,” France said.
The Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment, known as CUTE, is a cubesat launched in 2021 to characterize the composition and mass-loss rates of exoplanet atmospheres. Credit: University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
Smallsat Astronomy
The budget for developing, assembling and operating CUTE through the summer of 2024 is about $5.5 million.
“At this cost, we’re still figuring out how to make things work,” France said. “So, working and doing science is batting above your average.”
The missions mimicking CUTE are 12-unit cubesats Sprite and Mantis.
Sprite, which stands for Supernova remnants Proxies for Reionization and Integrated Testbed Experiment, is scheduled for launch in 2024. The $4 million mission will study how gas and dust is processed in galaxies and how energetic ionizing radiation is transported from stars to the intergalactic medium between galaxies.
Mantis, short for Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy, is an $8.5 million campaign to observe how high-energy radiation from stars influences the habitability of planets.
Ingenuity and Chance
CUTE remains operational more than two years after launch thanks to ingenuity and luck.
The tiny satellite was sent into orbit at a higher altitude than mission planners expected. As a result, CUTE is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere in 2027, instead of late this year as originally scheduled.
Additional time in orbit means extra wear and tear on hardware.
“Every time we have a problem, we figure out a new way to operate the spacecraft,” France said.
When the satellite’s primary and backup memory storage cards failed, for example, mission operators learned to communicate directly with CUTE’s scientific payload.
“We send the data down directly from the science payload to the ground and we bypass the spacecraft altogether,” France said.
Distant Galaxies
Cubesats have been widely adopted for civil and commercial space missions since LASP researchers proposed CUTE in 2016.
At the time, “we were beginning to believe we could study the sun and Earth’s upper atmosphere with cubesats,” France said. “But the idea that we could be pointed at targets that are 300, 400 light years away and do high-precision astronomical measurements from the cubesat was ambitious.”
Now that CUTE has shown the potential, small satellites could play key roles in observing distant galaxies, black holes “and all the other things that we’re interested in studying,” France said.
Australian in-space servicing startup Space Machines Company announced plans Dec. 5 to work with U.S. on-orbit refueling startup Orbit Fab to validate and demonstrate key technologies. SMC is the first non-U.S. customer to use Orbit Fab’s fiducial alignment markers. The markers are painted on SMC’s Optimus Orbital Servicing Vehicle, which is set to launch in early 2024 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare flight. Orbit Fab’s fiducial markers are designed to act like a QR code, ensuring, for example, that a fuel shuttle replenishes the correct client. The fiducial markers also ensure proper spacecraft alignment for docking. “Without these fiducials, mission operators would need much more complex computer vision systems, more compute power, and you might even need artificial intelligence,” Orbit Fab CEO Daniel Faber told SpaceNews by email. “You’ve got to deal with very difficult lighting effects. These fiducial markers really simplify the process of having our Orbit Fab fuel shuttles approach a spacecraft and prepare and align for secure docking and refueling in space.” SMC’s work with Orbit Fab “will serve as a pioneering example of in-space validation of these groundbreaking technologies,” Rajat Kulshrestha, SMC co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.
Space Machines Company's Optimus Orbital Servicing Vehicle painted with Orbit Fab's fiducial markers. Credit: Space Machines Company
Bundles with RAFTI
Orbit Fab has bundled its fiducial marker system with the company’s refueling port known as RAFTI, or Rapidly Attachable Fuel Transfer Interface.
“We’ve provided RAFTI and fiducials to a number of government and commercial companies to make their spacecraft refuelable and safe for rendezvous and docking procedures and missions in space,” Faber said.
Orbit Fab fiducial markers installed on Space Machine Company’s Optimus Orbital Servicing Vehicle manufactured in Sydney, Australia. Credit: Space Machine Company
Orbit Fab, SMC and a third company launching a satellite on Transporter 10 rely on Orbit Fab’s fiducial markers, Orbit Fab Chief Commercial Officer Adam Harris said by email.
“Having these fiducials on missions like the SMC Optimus mission allows us to test the rendezvous-docking capabilities and really prove that out,” Faber said.
Orbit Fab has three launches set for 2025 to deliver fuel for U.S. government customers. In one of the demonstration missions, Orbit Fab plans to supply the U.S. Space Force Tetra-5 spacecraft with hydrazine.
“And those government customers will have RAFTI and fiducial markers to make this critical fuel delivery missions possible,” Faber said. “Orbit Fab must demonstrate that our refueling systems work, and we need to demonstrate the effectiveness of our fuel delivery on orbit. This drives our confidence in our own technology and the customers’ confidence in our technology and breakthrough refueling services.”
ITAR Issue
A hurdle for international cooperation in satellite servicing is ITAR, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
The list of military technologies strictly controlled for export includes systems related to docking and grappling objects in space.
Orbit Fab is advocating for an ITAR exception for cooperative docking technologies, “so that we can have more cooperation with ally countries like Australia and the UK and vehicles like SMC’s Optimus Orbital Servicing Vehicle,” Harris said. “If spacecraft are doing business together and using solutions like fiducial markers to ensure safe, sustainable, and responsible rendezvous and docking, we’re pushing for an agreement where this can happen outside of ITAR controls. These ITAR regulations were initially designed to limit non-cooperative docking in space.”
