Arcadia (8/10/22)

Good morning, and happy Hump Day. Here's to a hopefully less busy hump day next week.  

In today's newsletter:🛰️ Meet Acadia 🔭 Student telescopes 💸 The term sheet

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. 

Capella Lifts the Wraps on Acadia

San Francisco-based Capella Space has announced Acadia, its next generation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. Capella’s SAR satellites can see through clouds and provide all-weather, 24/7 imaging. The startup primarily serves defense and intelligence customers. 

Backstory: Capella launched Denali, a backpack-sized SAR satellite, in late 2018. Next came the 100-kg. Sequoia in Aug. 2020. More recently, Capella launched the Whitney subconstellation, consisting of satellites that are ~2x Denali’s size. Acadia is set to start launching in 2023. 

The generation after Acadia is named Bryce, Capella CEO Payam Banazadeh told Payload, but the startup isn’t ready to share any details. Curious about the naming conventions? We were too. Capella uses national parks as sources of inspiration for constellation names, Banazadeh said. 

Now, on to Acadia’s specs…

Better resolution + bandwidth: Acadia will boost radar bandwidth (500 MHz → 700 MHz), while also boosting resolution (slant range res @ 0.214m; ground range res @ 0.31m for standard look angles).

Higher quality: The company is augmenting power by 40+% in its new fleet. Paired with the bandwidth boosts, Acadia will enable Capella’s customers to tap into more granular SAR imagery and see more details from space. 

Speed: Capella has two nifty tricks up its sleeve here: 

1. Its satellites already communicate overhead with Inmarsat GEO satellites to enable more rapid tasking of its equipment, rather than having to wait on ground stations to uplink new orders. Acadia will have upgraded antennas for speedier comms. 

2. Acadia will also operate with optical inter-satellite links (OISL), which should significantly cut latency across the board. 

Put it all together: “We're already the best on resolution and quality,” Banazadeh said. “We've found that putting all of our chips on those three variables: resolution, quality, and timeliness...is really the right bet.”

Capella designs, builds, tests, integrates, and operates its key components (like the radars). The startup clearly adheres to agile development doctrine and operates on 12–18 month development cycles for big component and satellite upgrades. 

• Reaching economies of scale brings unit production costs down, Banazadeh said, to the point that it can offset the costs of adding new bells and whistles. 

• Capella is also selectively building out specific software applications for its SAR datasets, like vessel, aircraft, car, and flood detection. 

Runway? Doesn’t seem to be a problem. The six-year-old startup has banked $190M to date, most recently raising $97M in April.

“We actually have gotten so much interest from investors who want to put money in [just months later], because really, our business is just booming,” Banazadeh said. Demand and revenue are up and to the right and “margins are healthy.”

Share this with someone who wants to go to all the national parks: 

Coming Soon to a Classroom Near You: Space Telescopes 

Students across the globe could soon have the ability to identify near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) for a grade, thanks to a collaboration between TransAstra and Slooh. 

Driving the news: The two companies announced a partnership on Tuesday that will ultimately let K-12 students book time on a telescope. 

Getting the grade: Students will reserve observation time on a telescope equipped with TransAstra’s Sutter technology and search for NEAs via Slooh’s virtual classroom interface.

• Slooh already operates a “virtual telescope” for students, as well as a network of ground telescopes. 

• TransAstra opened its first Sutter telescope at the Winer Observatory in Arizona this past April and reports that the telescope is meeting expectations.

• For the past few weeks, TransAstra has also been working out of the Sierra Remote Observatory (SRO) to ensure coverage during the summer monsoon season.

Through this partnership, the two companies plan to expand their combined network of telescopes globally to achieve full-sky, 24-hour, all-weather coverage. The technology can be used in many ways, but TransAstra CEO Joel Sercel told Payload that the companies are aiming to democratize access to space by bringing telescope tasking to students. 

“It shouldn’t matter who you are or where you’re from—everyone should have access to space,” Sercel said.

Sutter: TransAstra equips its telescopes with Optimized Matched Filter Tracking (OMFT), which uses image tracking to improve the accuracy and computational efficiency of its observations. 

• OMFT allows telescopes to identify very faint, fast-moving NEAs for a far lower cost than heritage systems.

• Existing telescopes can also be retrofitted with OMFT tech. 

• The ultimate goal, Sercel said, is to “find enough asteroids to usher in a gold rush to space.” The company has longer-term asteroid mining projects in the works.

While the telescopes were designed for NEA hunting, they’re incidentally also well-suited for orbital debris identification and space situational awareness. As the orbital environment gets busier, better sensors and tracking are needed sooner rather than later, opening up an immediate possible new revenue stream for the telescopes, per Sercel.

Taking to the skies: The collaboration doesn’t end here. Next, the two companies plan to co-develop a space telescope that will help them gain a higher vantage point and observe small objects at lunar distances.

Sponsored

Learn About BlackSky

BlackSky is a leading provider of real-time geospatial intelligence transforming the way industries monitor change.

It designs, owns, and operates one of the industry’s leading low earth orbit small satellite constellations, optimized to capture imagery cost-efficiently where and when customers need it.

The company’s Spectra AI SaaS platform is powered by a proprietary space and terrestrial sensor network to develop critical insights and analytics. 

Relied upon by US and international government agencies, commercial businesses, and organizations around the world.

Check it out and get in touch with the team.

In Other News

• SpaceX led Q2 with launch cadence (16 missions total vs. China’s 12) and upmass (158,666kg vs. China’s 38,822kg), per BryceTech’s quarterly briefing. Roscosmos finished in a distant third on both metrics (four total launches and 17,189kg total upmass). 

• Also…SpaceX flew its 35th mission of 2022 last night. The company has now launched 2,920 Starlink satellites to date. 

• Viasat ($VSAT) CEO Mark Danberg penned an FT op-ed calling for more regulation of debris in LEO. 

• POTUS signed the Chips + Science bill (and NASA Authorization Act) into law Tuesday. 

• The FAA issued a TFR (temporary flight restriction) around the Kodiak spaceport (where ABL’s RS1 is currently located). 

• NASA’s inspector general announced an audit of the Artemis program’s supply chain.

• AST SpaceMobile's ($ASTS) all-important BlueWalker 3 test satellite has arrived at Cape Canaveral.

The View from Starbase