Spaceflight Industries

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Spaceflight Industries, Inc.
legal form Corporation
founding 2015
Seat Seattle , United States
management Curt Blake (President and CEO )
Branch Aerospace Engineering
Website spaceflight.com

Spaceflight Industries is a US aerospace company that specializes in the organization of rideshare flights. Spaceflight mediates the launch of small satellites and small space probes as secondary payloads with various launch vehicles such as Antares , Soyuz and Falcon 9 as well as from the ISS . Spaceflight Industries also books entire rockets for the launch of many small satellites at a time and develops adapters to attach the transmitted payloads to the upper rocket stage. The company has also been building its own constellation of earth observation satellites since 2018 .

history

Spaceflight Industries was founded in 2015 by Jason Andrews with the aim of offering inexpensive and uncomplicated access to space with standardized interfaces. Shortly thereafter, Curt Blake joined the company as Vice President.

In February 2020, Spaceflight agreed to sell the Rideshare business to the Japanese companies Mitsui and Yamasa . You want to concentrate entirely on building your own satellite constellation.

Corporate structure

Spaceflight Industries, Inc. acts as the parent company for the three aerospace companies Spaceflight Systems , Spaceflight Services and Spaceflight Networks, as well as for the satellite image service provider BlackSky Global . Spaceflight Systems is responsible for the design and construction of satellites, Spaceflight Services for integration as well as launch and Spaceflight Networks for communication services during operation.

Spaceflight Systems

Spaceflight Systems was founded in 1999 (then under the name Andrews Space ) by Jason Andrews and Marian Joh. Prior to founding Spaceflight Systems, Jason Andrews worked at Kistler Aerospace .

Spaceflight Services

Spaceflight Services was founded in 2010 by Jason Andrews. It offers commercial "ridesharing" and specializes in CubeSats , NanoSat and MicroSats.

Business model

The traditional business model for access to space is based on carrying only one satellite on a launcher. With the miniaturization of the satellite components and the improved communication capabilities, the satellites have been reduced in size. Spaceflight buys excess capacity on commercial launch vehicles, sells the capacity to a number of "ridesharing" secondary payloads, and integrates all secondary satellites into the launch vehicle as a discrete unit. It offers a significant price reduction in orbit compared to buying a standalone launcher.

Past and future missions

The first Spaceflight Services brokered launch was from Dove 2 on April 19, 2013 with a Soyuz-2-1A rocket . The customer was the company Cosmogia (later: Planet Labs ). By January 2016, Spaceflight Services launched a total of 77 payloads on 11 flights. Soyuz, Antares and Dnepr served as launch vehicles ; some of the nanosatellites were brought to the ISS in the space transporters Cygnus and Dragon .

Spaceflight brokered the launch of the lunar lander Beresheet and Alina with Falcon 9 rockets.

The company's largest mission was the launch of 64 satellites with a Falcon 9 in December 2018 (Mission SSO-A ). It turned out to be so logistically demanding that Spaceflight then concentrated on smaller missions again.

Spaceflight Networks

Spaceflight Networks , based in Washington (USA), was founded in 2014 by Jason Andrews and has been operating a global network of ground stations since 2015.

Ground stations

Status: end of 2016

Location frequency

(in MHz)

ERP

(in kW)

antenna active owner
Tukwila, WA World icon 449.75-451.25 MHz 0.063 M2 Antenna Systems Inc 450CP34 Yes BlackSky Global, LCC
Redmond, WA World icon 2071.875 MHz 21.56 Orbit CS GAIA-100-3.7-SX Yes BlackSky Global, LCC
Fairbanks, AK World icon 449.75-451.25 MHz 0.063 M2 Antenna Systems Inc 450CP34 Yes BlackSky Global, LCC
2071.875 MHz 21.56 Orbit CS GAIA-100-3.7-SX Yes BlackSky Global, LCC
Umiat Meridian, AK World icon 449.75-451.25 MHz 0.063 M2 Antenna Systems Inc 450CP34 No BlackSky Global, LCC
2071.875 MHz 21.56 Orbit CS GAIA-100-3.7-SX No BlackSky Global, LCC
Truth or Consequence, NM World icon 449.75-451.25 MHz 0.063 M2 Antenna Systems Inc 450CP34 Yes BlackSky Global, LCC
2071.875 MHz 21.56 Orbit CS GAIA-100-3.7-SX Yes BlackSky Global, LCC

BlackSky Global

BlackSky Global LCC , based in Washington (USA), was founded in early 2014 by Jason Andrews and offers satellite images as a service. A worldwide earth observation network with a constellation of 60 satellites is planned. On February 5, 2014, BlackSky Global was granted a NOAA license for a commercial, optical earth observation network that is expected to operate at an altitude of 450 km to 600 km and an inclination of 98.7 degrees. The Blacksky Pathfinder 1 satellite was launched on September 25, 2016 for system evaluation and the first two operational satellites Blacksky Global 1 and Blacksky Global 2 followed at the end of 2018.

No. Start date ( UTC ) Launch site Launcher COSPAR ID Remarks
1 29th November 2018 IndiaIndia SHAR PSLV 2018-096M
2 3rd December 2018 United StatesUnited States VAFB Falcon 9 2018-099BG
3 June 29, 2019 New ZealandNew Zealand Mahia Electron 2019-037C
4th 19th August 2019 New ZealandNew Zealand Mahia Electron 2019-054E
5
6 		24 June 2020 United StatesUnited States KSC Falcon 9 two satellites planned as secondary payloads by Starlink as part of the Smallsat Rideshare program
7
8
9
10 		2020 IndiaIndia SHAR SSLV planned launch with four satellites

Web links

Commons : Spaceflight Industries  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Space Flight Industries signs definitive agreement to sell Space Flight, its ride share launch services provider, to Japan's Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and Yamasa Co., Ltd . Press release from Spaceflight Industries, February 2020.
  2. ^ Corporations: Registration Detail - WA Secretary of State. In: www.sos.wa.gov. Accessed December 15, 2016 .
  3. ^ Doug Mohney: Cosmogia Quietly Puts up Two Earth-imaging Smallsats. April 23, 2013, accessed December 7, 2016 .
  4. ^ A b Spaceflight Industries: Launch Services. Retrieved December 7, 2016 .
  5. ^ Christoph Seidler: Google Lunar X-Prize. German team books ticket to the moon . In: Der Spiegel ONLINE . November 30, 2016 ( spiegel.de [accessed December 4, 2016]).
  6. ↑ Jeff Foust: Spaceflight looks to more rideshare missions with fewer satellites per launch. In: Spacenews. April 22, 2019, accessed May 7, 2019 .
  7. ^ Kratos' RT Logic and Spaceflight Announce Partnership for Enhanced Small Satellite Ground Support . In: Sensors and Systems . August 10, 2015 (English, sensorsandsystems.com [accessed December 15, 2016]).
  8. ^ John Springmann: CubeSat Operations with Spaceflight Networks . April 25, 2015 (English, calpoly.edu [PDF; 604 kB ; accessed on December 15, 2016]).
  9. ↑ BlackSky GLOBAL LLC :: Open Corporates. In: opencorporates.com. Accessed December 15, 2016 .
  10. ^ Corporations: Registration Detail - WA Secretary of State. In: www.sos.wa.gov. Accessed December 15, 2016 .
  11. ^ BlackSky Global Private Remote Sensing License: Public Summary. (PDF; 6.8KB) In: NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, March 7, 2014, accessed December 8, 2016 .
  12. ↑ FAA Commercial Space Transportation and the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (ed.): 2015 Commercial Space Transportation Forecasts . Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, DC April 2015, pp. 38 (English, faa.gov [PDF; 4.9 MB ; accessed on December 15, 2016]).
  13. ↑ BlackSky Global-1 is on Orbit! November 29, 2018. Retrieved December 19, 2018 (American English).
  14. ↑ Rock Launch Viewing Guide for Cape Canaveral .
  15. ↑ Spaceflight Industries To Sell Its Satellite Rideshare Launch Business To Japan's Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and Yamasa Co. . Spacewatch Global, February 2020.
  16. ↑ Spaceflight gets first crack at India's new SSLV rocket - and puts up a 'sold out' sign . GeekWire, Aug 6, 2019.