Lesson learned (8/3/2022)

Good morning. We’d like to start today by honoring Nichelle Nichols, who passed away Sunday at the age of 89. Nichols played Nyota Uhura on Star Trek and crewed the USS Enterprise with countless other TV and movie stars.

In NASA’s tribute, the agency said: “We celebrate the life of Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek actor, trailblazer, and role model, who symbolized to so many what was possible. She partnered with us to recruit some of the first women and minority astronauts, and inspired generations to reach for the stars.”

In today's newsletter:📡 Slingshot M&A👩🏽‍🚀 Astro reqs💸 The term sheet

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Slingshot Scores Two Acquisitions

Slingshot Aerospace has its sights set on being the industry leader in space situational awareness (SSA). This morning, the company announced that it has acquired Numerica’s Space Domain Awareness (SDA) division and UK-based Seradata.

“These acquisitions bring a single, unified space intelligence platform to the market that the market needs, and hasn't seen,” Melanie Stricklan, 21-year US Air Force veteran and CEO of Slingshot Aerospace, told Payload.

Slingshot 101: Austin-based Slingshot Aerospace is bent on creating the world’s first real-time virtualization of the space domain environment from LEO to cislunar orbit, dubbed the Digital Space Twin. The company hosts two central products on top of that twin: Slingshot Laboratory and Slingshot Beacon.

• Slingshot Laboratory is an astronautics training and simulation tool.

• Slingshot Beacon is a space situational awareness platform currently in beta. The platform allows government, civil, and commercial users to coordinate maneuvers and share data about their on-orbit assets.

Slingshot raised a $25M Series A-1 in March. Since then, it’s been focused on hiring and building out its product offerings. These acquisitions each produce unique, high-quality data that will be used to augment the Digital Space Twin and the customer-facing products built on top.

The new acquisitions

With increased launch cadence and orbital activity come a need for improved SDA to keep operators in the loop on every new spacecraft and maneuver. “The space industry is at an inflection point,” said Stricklan. “We saw just an incredible opportunity to bring together three real product companies, with pioneering technologies, and each of them address, honestly, the biggest challenges our customers face on orbit today.”

The top priority for these acquisitions was always operational value for the customer, Stricklan said. By bringing Numerica SDA and Seradata in-house, Slingshot is able to leverage their proprietary data on its platforms for customers who otherwise would not have that access.

Numerica SDA: Numerica’s Space Domain Awareness arm is the only commercial provider of 24-hour optical satellite tracking from LEO to GEO. The company operates more than 150 sensors and 30 telescopes in 20 locations spanning the globe, and builds in-house data processing software for government customers.

“Numerica has been singularly focused on national security,” Stricklan said. “This gives us an opportunity to bring our capital forward to really expand their capabilities to the many, many commercial customers who have been knocking on their door for their exquisite data.”

Seradata: UK-based Seradata’s seven employees and suite of launch and satellite data are all joining the Slingshot team. Seradata’s primary product is SpaceTrak, a database of every satellite launch since 1957. The company will retain its UK headquarters, granting Slingshot greater access to the UK space industry and European customers.

+ While we’re here: Catch Pathfinder #0001 with Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini.

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Experience Necessary

Yesterday, NASA released an updated list of requirements for private astronaut missions to the ISS, and it seems that future tours will need extra supervision. Future private missions to the ISS will need to be accompanied by a former NASA astronaut.

ICYMI: In April, Axiom launched Ax-1, the first-ever private astronaut mission to the ISS. The crew of four—Michael López-Alegría, Larry Connor, Mark Pathy, and Eytan Stibbe—spent 17 days living and working alongside the existing ISS crew. López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut, served as mission commander.

All in all, the mission was declared a success, but it wasn’t without its pain points.

• In post-mission briefings, the private astronauts said they were grateful their trip home was delayed a few days because they had overloaded the first week or so with more than 100 hours of experimentation in addition to outreach events.

• “In essence, the arrival of the Axiom personnel seemed to have a larger-than-expected impact on the daily workload on the professional International Space Station crew,” said Susan Helms, a member of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, in May.

During planning for Ax-1, “it became pretty clear, first of all, that customers really didn’t want to fly with nobody who has done it before,” López-Alegría said July 28. “Secondly, NASA was a lot more comfortable having someone who had been there before.”

Still, Axiom’s original plan before launching Ax-1 was to fly four customers by the fourth mission, without a professional astronaut accompanying the flight.

New rules: With all new endeavors, there’s a learning curve. The agency is also mandating more time-management measures to ensure operations aboard the ISS can continue as usual during private astronaut missions.

• Experiments conducted by private astronaut crews will have to be submitted to the ISS National Lab 12 months in advance.

• Future missions will have extra buffer time at the beginning and end to allow private astronauts to adjust to the space station and microgravity environment, and to prepare for early departures when/if necessary.

What’s next? Axiom’s next private astronaut mission, Ax-2, will be commanded by former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson. That mission is on the docket for sometime next spring.

+ While we're here: Catch Pathfinder #0001 with Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini.

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Every Wednesday, Ben and Andrew at Orbital Index curate a concise, technical summary of the week's happenings in space science and industry, and usually share some obscure nuggets of space nerdery as well.

Orbital Index helped inspire the idea behind Payload so definitely worth your time to give them a read and subscribe.

In Other News

• Momentus’s ($MNTS) Vigoride has deployed four additional customer satellites. The space tug operator also says it’s identified the root cause of anomalies experienced in its demo mission, but declined to say what it was.

• Debris from China’s Long March rocket (CZ-5B) reportedly fell near villages in Malaysia and Indonesia. No property damage or injuries, to our knowledge, have been reported.

• Here’s a video that shows the rocket reentering over the weekend.

• Sentinel-1B has reached the end of the line. The satellite experienced a software anomaly on Dec. 23 and has not been able to resume delivering radar data.

• ESA says its priority is now “fast-tracking” the launch of Sentinel-1C.

• Russia is rumored to have launched an “inspector” satellite that is closely following USA-326, an American spy satellite.

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SmallSat Is Next Week

Its time for some of you to start dusting off your business casual and for others to look for those last minute flights to Salt Lake City. SmallSat is next week.

This is the Payload team's first time attending so get in touch with any tips or if you want to meet with us. See you on the exhibit floor.

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