Imagine a new space race, where mad men advertise real-time services brought about by new fleets of small rockets leaving Earth almost daily. Startups gather around to watch nanosatellites and SmallSats enter Low Earth Orbit (LEO) on payloads en masse, one after another. Constellations of satellites are bringing real-time solutions and impactful services to customers across the globe.
“Data everywhere on the planet, all the time, and the ability to provide specific targeted services for our customers; that’s what we’re building,” says Jenny Barna, launch manager of Spire. “But for Spire to be successful, we need the ability to launch monthly and to choose from a variety of orbital planes.”
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Micro-launchers are making it possible for satellite constellations to increase reliable communications back to Earth in the form of real-time broadcasting, imaging, positioning and weather. Companies such as Spire are hoping for more certainty in launch schedules and greater flexibility.
A Bullish Market
“Nobody is moving fast enough for a company like Spire,” Barna says. “But we do see a huge increase of trust and professionalism between launch service providers and the nano satellite community. I think that is translating into a faster-moving launch services community.”
Newcomers to the industry such as Astro Digital — which has a constellation of small multi-spectral imaging satellites — help to illustrate the need for venture-funded enterprises that can balance their promises to customers with the reality of launch delays and limited scheduling.
“Since our customers are relying on us to deliver data, we need to know that our ride to orbit will work and will be an option for future launches,” says CEO Chris Biddy.
Launch Hurdles
Mike Safyan, director of launch for Planet, says: “The more availability there is in terms of different providers in different countries, I think it’s going to be better for the satellite industry as a whole. And, it creates competition that then pushes launch providers to be more innovative to provide better services.”
There is optimism that the collective headache caused from launch bottleneck will be relieved in the not-so-distant future. Companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are at work engineering new methods for rapid-reusability. This could allow launchers to manifest missions quick enough to keep up with the satellite community’s accelerating launch cadences.
“The progress I think we need is leveraging new manufacturing techniques, and leveraging new tricks like being able to recover the first stage,” says Satellogic CEO Emiliano Kargieman, whose company plans to launch a constellation of 300 small imaging satellites.VS
