International Small Satellite LEO Business
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| Near Earth Orbits becoming crowded |
EVIDENCE indicates that more and more organizations globally are getting involved with small satelliteprojects. Efforts have been ongoing to standardize systems and develop Plug and Play components. Many universities have adopted some of these standards to help their students develop actual space hardware.Governments continue to invest in small satellite technology development, creating new possibilities for scientific research and other applications of small satellites. This environment generates demand for small satellite launches,as evidenced by the last ten years of launch activity.
The Space Review: Small satellites, small launchers, big business?
In a presentation at the conference August 4, Elizabeth Buchen of SpaceWorks Enterprises said 122 satellites with masses between 1 and 50 kilograms had launched so far this year. By comparison, 92 such satellites launches in all of 2013.
That pace, she said, won’t continue for the rest of the year. “Given the launch schedules for the rest of the year, and the manifests for those launches, we’re still looking at about 140 for the year,” she said.
That 140 would be in line with what the company forecasted in its annual Nano/Microsatellite Market Assessment, published early this year. (Its 2013 forecast projected 93 such satellites would be launched that year, just one more than the actual tally.) Its forecast projects continued steady growth through the rest of the decade, with between 410 and 543 such satellite forecast for launch in 2020.
As the market grows, though, Buchen said the company would be adjusting its forecasting methodology. “We did not place a value judgment in our past assessments” about the viability of announced smallsat ventures. “In our future market assessments, though, we want to provide a more realistic view of the market.” That will include incorporating assessments of announced smallsat systems and the likelihood of delays, based on historical data.
Investing In Low Earth Orbit Micro-Satellite Telemetry in China - China Briefing News
China’s LEO (low earth orbit) micro-satellite telemetry market (remote sensing and monitoring with satellites less than 500 kg) could be entering a new phase. With around 100 micro-satellites launched in 2014 with prospects of 150 more in 2015, the micro-satellite market is booming. The telemetry market it serves is growing from around US$ 100 billion in 2014 to over US$ 240 billion by 2020. Over 90 percent is commercial; or in other words, less than 10 percent is aerospace defense dependent.
Payoff for Earth Observation
Last week the Landsat Advisory Group, a sub-committee of the US Government’s National Geospatial Advisory Committee, issued a report looking at the economic value of Landsat data to America. As Landsat data is freely available, quantifying the value of that data isn’t easy; and the Group approached it by considering the cost of providing alternative solutions for Landsat data.They considered sixteen applications, linked to US Government departments, which use Landsat data. These ranged from flood mitigation, shoreline mapping and coastal change; through forestry management, waterfowl habitats and vineyard management; to mapping, wildfire assessment and global security support. The report estimated that these sixteen streams alone produced savings of between $350 million and $436 million to the US economy. The report concluded that the economic value of just one year of Landsat data far exceeds the multi-year total cost of building, launching, and managing Landsat satellites and sensors.
This conclusion was interesting given reports in 2014 that Landsat 8 cost around $850m to build and launch, a figure which will increase to almost $1 billion with running costs; and that NASA were estimating that Landsat 9 would cost in excess of the $650m budget they had been given. These figures are significantly in excess of the quantified figures in the Advisory Group report; however work undertaken by US Geological Survey in 2013 identified the economic benefit of Landsat data for the year 2011 is estimated to be $1.70 billion for US users, and $400 million for international users.
Small LEO Satellite Launchers
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| Swiss Company to Launch Robotic Mini-Shuttle in 2017 |
Swiss Space Systems (S3) has the ability to launch satellites off the back of of an Airbus A330 airplane. Aggregating technology from Europe and Russia (but not the U.S.), the S3 multinational effort is bringing down the micro-satellite launch price tag to around US$ 10 million with prospects of lowering it closer to marginal costs of US$ 1 million, depending on response to competition.
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| DARPA initiates reusable, aircraft-like spaceship development | Network World |
The U.S. DARPA is encouraging additional companies (Boeing in conjunction with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic cooperating with Northrup Gruman, and Masten Space System matched with XCOR Aerospace) to build a space plane which can fly Mach10 into lower earth orbit, but it has not yet publicized success.
LEO Constellation Announcements: The Industry Reacts - Via Satellite
Earlier this year, the satellite industry was catapulted onto the front pages of the business press with SpaceX and OneWeb announcing separate ambitious plans to build hundreds and thousands of new satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). OneWeb, led by O3b Networks Founder Greg Wyler and backed by Qualcomm and the Virgin Group, plans to build a constellation of around 650 micro satellites. Following this announcement SpaceX revealed plans to build thousands of micro satellites to bring Internet connectivity all over the world also.
High-flying 2.0 satellite ventures not likely to fail like 1.0 satellite firms - FierceWirelessTech
Newer satellite-to-be players say they want to connect the 3 billion people who are not connected to the Internet. Their advantage? Access to newer satellite technologies that bring down the costs of deployment significantly. MIT Technology Review notes that micro satellites don't need to operate at very high orbits, reducing launch costs, and they can deliver performance comparable to larger, older satellites at higher altitudes.
Businessweek suggests that OneWeb, the Greg Wyler-led venture backed by Qualcomm and Virgin Group's Branson, could function as a giant back-up to the Internet. Wyler is talking about offering prices that are affordable to consumers, and he's going after a wholesale business model where telcos would sell to the end-users. It also could deliver faster Internet service to airplanes and be useful in a natural disaster when terrestrial communications are wiped out, Businessweek reported.
OneWeb is talking about starting out with 648 low-earth satellites 750 miles up, with data traveling between space and the surface in 20 milliseconds, which would provide Internet service capable of pretty much any app. Branson has said OneWeb has the capacity to put up nearly 2,500 satellites. The hope is to have OneWeb up and running by 2018 at a cost more than $2 billion for starters.
2013-09-26 IAC2013 Microlauncher DIT Analysis.pdf
The miniaturization of components is dramatically expanding the mission capabilities for Nano and Microsatellites. However, they lack of the basic tool to exploit their full potential: a dedicated Microsat launcher. This paper aims at understanding how the sustaining innovations in Microsatellites and the whole new industry that is generating around them is creating room for a disruption in the launch industry with a Microlauncher. To analyze this disrupting innovation Clayton M. Christensen’s perspective is applied. This framework helps in understanding the value a dedicated launcher would create to the market, why incumbent players are ignoring this emerging segment and how these legacy playerscan see their market attacked from below. Finally, this paper reflects on how the tandem formed by high-performance Microsatellites and a Micro-launcher can generate a new set of capabilities to disrupt the entire Space industry.
Small Satellite Design
Microsatellites and nanosatellites: A brave new world
The microsatellite employs modern, sophisticated,
commercial off-the-shelf, electronic circuits to provide a high degree
of capability. Communications and Earth observation payloads require an
Earth-pointing platform and so the microsatellite is maintained to
within 0.3° of nadir by employing a combination of passive
gravity-gradient stabilisation (using a six-metre boom) and closed-loop
active damping using electromagnets operated by the onboard computer.
Attitude determination is provided by the Sun, geomagnetic field
sensors, and star field cameras. Orbital position is determined
autonomously to within ±50 metres by an on-board global positioning
system (GPS) receiver. Electrical power is generated by four
body-mounted gallium arsenide solar array panels, each generating
approximately 35 W, and is stored in a 7 Ah nickel–cadmium rechargeable
battery. Communications are supported by VHF uplinks and UHF downlinks,
using fully error-protected packet link protocols operating in
conjunction with PC-based groundstation terminals.
It is the on-board data handling (OBDH) system
that is the key to the sophisticated capability of the microsatellite.
At the heart of the OBDH system is a 80C386 on-board computer (OBC),
which runs a real-time multi-tasking operating system. In addition,
there is a secondary on-board computer to share computing-intensive
tasks and act as a complete back up.
A primary feature of the OBDH philosophy is that
all the software on the microsatellite is loaded after launch and can be
upgraded and reloaded by the control groundstation at will thereafter.
Normally, the satellite is operated via the primary computer and the
real-time multi-tasking operating system. All telecommand instructions
are formulated into a ‘diary’ at the groundstation and then transferred
to the satellite OBC for execution either immediately or, more usually,
at some future time. Telemetry from on-board platform systems and
payloads is similarly gathered by the OBC and either transmitted
immediately and/or stored whilst the satellite is out of range of the
control station. The OBCs also operate the attitude control systems
according to control algorithms that take input from the various
attitude sensors and then act accordingly. Thus it is this OBDH
environment that allows such a tiny microsatellite to operate in a
highly complex, flexible and sophisticated manner, enabling fully
automatic and autonomous control of the satellite’s systems and
payloads.
Earth observation Microsatellites have really brought about a revolution
in Earth observation.
Conventional Earth observation and remote-sensing
satellite missions are extremely costly – £300 million is not unusual.
Thus there are relatively few such missions and the resulting data,
whilst providing impressive spatial and spectral resolution, yield poor
temporal resolution (revisit) of ground targets due to the small numbers
of these spacecraft actually in orbit. A new opportunity for remote
sensing using inexpensive small satellites has come with the
availability of
- (i) high density 2-dimensional-array, semiconductor charge-coupled device (CCD) optical detectors (as used in consumer video and digital cameras), and
- (ii) low-power consumption yet computationally powerful microprocessors.
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| Space cube: Planet Labs plans to launch a constellation of Earth-imaging satellites, each consisting of one or more CubeSat units like the one shown here. |
the space industry is starting to realize the potential of small satellites. Indeed, the last decade has seen a substantial boom in their development, both domestically and internationally. Much of this growth can be attributed to the popularity of CubeSats, a well-known subclass of small satellites. However, CubeSats are only part of this rapidly expanding picture. Furthermore, it appears that small satellites are starting to move beyond the demonstration phase to provide the performance and reliability needed for commercial ventures and governmental applications.
The CubeSat Revolution
CubeSats derive their name from the so-called “1U” building block, which is a 10 × 10 × 10 centimeter cube, typically weighing around 1 kilogram. Larger CubeSats are built by stacking these units. Bob Twiggs (then at Stanford University) developed the initial concept in early 1999 after working with The Aerospace Corporation on his Orbiting Picosatellite Automated Launcher (OPAL) microsatellite. Jordi Puig-Suari from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo helped refine the concept and create the specifications.The first CubeSat launched in June 2003; by the end of 2013, 155 had been placed in orbit, with 78 launched in 2013 alone. The United States, Russia, China, India, Japan, and the European Union all launched CubeSats in 2013. Almost 20 percent of the CubeSats launched that year were sponsored by the DOD. Aerospace has built and flown eight CubeSats since 2004 and is working on seven more.
Related/Background
- The Space Review: Small satellites, small launchers, big business?
- ngac-landsat-economic-value-paper-2014-update.pdf
Last week the Landsat Advisory Group, a sub-committee of the US Government’s National Geospatial Advisory Committee, issued a report looking at the economic value of Landsat data to America. As Landsat data is freely available, quantifying the value of that data isn’t easy; and the Group approached it by considering the cost of providing alternative solutions for Landsat data.
They considered sixteen applications, linked to US Government departments, which use Landsat data. These ranged from flood mitigation, shoreline mapping and coastal change; through forestry management, waterfowl habitats and vineyard management; to mapping, wildfire assessment and global security support. The report estimated that these sixteen streams alone produced savings of between $350 million and $436 million to the US economy. The report concluded that the economic value of just one year of Landsat data far exceeds the multi-year total cost of building, launching, and managing Landsat satellites and sensors.
This conclusion was interesting given reports in 2014 that Landsat 8 cost around $850m to build and launch, a figure which will increase to almost $1 billion with running costs; and that NASA were estimating that Landsat 9 would cost in excess of the $650m budget they had been given. These figures are significantly in excess of the quantified figures in the Advisory Group report; however work undertaken by US Geological Survey in 2013 identified the economic benefit of Landsat data for the year 2011 is estimated to be $1.70 billion for US users, and $400 million for international users.- See more at: http://www.pixalytics.com/space-invest/#sthash.AslQ9jVt.dpuf - 2015 SpaceWorks Nano/Microsatellite Market Assessment | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference
- Smaller Satellites: Bigger Business? - Springer
- Alternative Futures: United States Commercial Satellite Imagery in 2020, Robert A.Weber and Kevin M. O’Connell, November 2011
- Is space a good investment? | Pixalytics Ltd
- How Many Earth Observation Satellites are in Space? | Pixalytics Ltd
- Small is the new Big | Chris Brunskill - Academia.edu
- "Space, Surveillance Aircraft, Cyber & Missile Defense Systems" | Israel Defense
- 27 Indian satellites currently operational: Government - The Economic Times
- Future Space Missions and Services - A Road Map for Future Technology Development
- MICRO- MINI-SATELLITES FOR AFFORDABLE EO CONSTELLATIONS: RAPID-EYE & DMC
- Why Elon Musk Wants to Launch a Space-Based Internet Service | MIT Technology Review
- TechNote_MicroMAS.pdf
- Satellite market entering growth phase | 2015-03-30 | Microwave Journal
- System Design for Commercial Microsatellite Missions - viewcontent.cgi
- Google 'to invest in $1bn SpaceX internet satellite programme' - Telegraph
- OneWeb Announces Plans to Launch a New Satellite Constellation to Bring High-Speed Internet to Underserved Areas Around the World | Business Wire
- What does the launch of more than 60 microsatellites in one week mean for the future of Earth observation?
- SpaceWorks’ 2014 Nano/Microsatellite Market Assessment
- Michel Pons_Existing Space Access for Small Satellites.pdf
- South Africa’s Polar-Orbiting Ploughshares:A National Space Agency
- M. LAbbate_31st_Space_Symposium_Tech_Track_0.pdf
- Compact SAR & MicroSat_31st_Space_Symposium_final - M.LAbbate_31st_Space_Symposium_Tech_Track_paper.pdf
- NanoSAR – CASE STUDY OF SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR FOR NANO - SATELLITES IAC-12D123x14028_-_284634.pdf
- Twin Nano - Satellite Concept Paper - to forecast and monitor natural disasters Using NanoSAR-Saroj Kumar.pdf
Project STUDSAT-2 India’s First Twin Satellite Mission to Prove Inter-Satellite Communication (Technology Demonstration Project) - SatMagazine: MicroSat Systems - Low Cost Satellites — Nanos, Minis and Micros Making Headway
- Microsatellite Remote Sensing | Asher Space Research Institute
- SpaceWorks_Nano_Microsatellite_Market_Assessment_January_2014.pdf
- Microsat Systems Canada... A Constellation Cometh (SATCOM)
- Earth Climate Science Mission Will Be Aboard A New Spacecraft Built By Blue Canyon Technologies
- Microsatellite Remote Sensing | Asher Space Research Institute
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