Satellite dodgeball (8/9/22)

Good morning. Read all the way through for a surprise at the end of today's newsletter.

In today's newsletter:🎧 Pathfinder #0011🔥 Dodgeball kit📊 Viasat earnings🔁 On the move

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Pathfinder #0011, featuring Moriba Jah 

Today, we’re tackling the topic of space junk on Pathfinder with Dr. Moriba Jah. Moriba is an astrodynamicist, space environmentalist, and associate professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at UT Austin (obligatory 🤘 from Ryan). He’s also the chief scientist and cofounder of Privateer, with Alex Fielding and Steve “Woz” Wozniak. 

Today’s Pathfinder is brought to you by SpiderOak Mission Systems, an industry leader in cybersecurity. Check out their space cyber whitepaper here. 

Sneak peek

In the simplest of terms, Moriba specializes in studying and predicting the motion of space objects. Moriba walks us through his framework for thinking about this not-so-simple task, along with…

• Whether LEO has a carrying capacity 

• The geopolitical calculus of maintaining the orbital commons

• The challenges of international and public-private coordination 

• Moriba’s efforts to “recruit empathy” for space environmentalism

• A tragedy of the orbital commons…but also, reasons to be optimistic 

Privateer has stayed secretive until recently. In the episode, we explore the following questions:

• Where does the startup get its data? 

• How could the wisdom of crowds come into play? 

• What does the tech stack look like? 

• How is Privateer thinking about its own orbital assets and hosted payloads? 

• Who will the platform’s power users be?

Where to get Pathfinder #0011

💻 Watch on YouTube🎧 Listen on Spotify 🍎 Tune in via Apple

+ And while we’re here…If you haven’t read up on orbital debris, check out our two-part series on the topic.

A Plug-and-Play Dodgeball System for Satellites

Benchmark Space Systems is ready to bring a last-minute collision avoidance kit to market, the Vermont startup said this morning. Dubbed COLA, the tiny thruster system is designed compactly so it can be retrofitted onto satellites that already have finalized designs, Benchmark EVP Chris Carella told Payload.

All that junk out there: The orbital environment is getting more crowded. More satellites in LEO = a higher chance of collisions. And any accidental collisions or deliberate debris-creating events increase the risk of further collisions and later conjunction warnings for operators. The ability to maneuver away from an unexpected close encounter or collision is “for the good of everyone in space,” Carella said.

Diet COLA: Satellites using electric propulsion need buffer time after a conjunction warning to make a maneuver, but in the future, that might not be possible. For companies who have already invested a lot of time and resources into building their birds, the solution needs to be cheap, unobtrusive, and quick to operate. “The market sees it as cheap insurance,” said Carella. 

• COLA uses chemical propulsion with hydrogen peroxide as fuel, allowing thrusters to quickly fire in a pinch.

• It’s designed to make last-minute maneuvers on satellites weighing <600kg. 

• The system can make 2-10 ~1km maneuvers over its lifetime, depending on the weight of the satellite and the size of the system itself. 

• Benchmark will offer four sizes chosen depending on mission requirements.

Pricing: The system will cost $100-150K all in.

Coming up: Benchmark has non-exclusively partnered with SCOUT to deploy COLA, and is working on other partnerships in space situational awareness, space traffic management, and electric propulsion. COLA is built out of heritage components and is ready for production right away, with the first units expected to ship in Q1 2023.

+ While we’re here: You’re not seeing double—yesterday, Benchmark announced it’s acquiring AASC’s plasma thruster tech. Read that story here.

Viasat Earnings Recap 

Viasat ($VSAT) kicked off another busy week of space earnings after the bell Monday. The satellite operator reported Q1 FY23 revenues of $678M (+2% YoY), with a GAAP net loss of $22M (vs. $17M of net income last year). 

• Viasat reported total consolidated awards of $783M for the quarter, good for a book-to-bill ratio of 1.2x and a backlog of $2.1B. (Book-to-bill = the ratio of orders received to amount shipped/billed over a given period.)

Highlights: Viasat’s “satellite services” segment achieved record quarterly revenue of $312M (+14% YoY), driven by strong commercial in-flight connectivity (IFC) sales. 

• IFC: Viasat ended June with 1,900 aircraft in service. A key customer win was Southwest Airlines, which inked a deal for IFC services on all new jets, starting this fall. 

• M&A: “We are also well positioned to fund the closing of the Inmarsat acquisition,” Viasat wrote to shareholders Monday. 

Lowlights: OpEx dragged on earnings due in part to ground segment build-out ahead of the ViaSat-3 launch (which has slipped but is on track to launch later this year). Other unfavorable factors included “market entry and support costs,” along with higher sales and marketing spend. 

The ViaSat-3 fleet: Each ~6.4-ton beast is expected to bring unprecedented download speeds (100’s of Mbps), 1-Terabit/second (tbps) of capacity, and service that can be dynamically reapportioned to high-demand areas across the globe. The three-satellite GEO fleet, in Viasat’s telling, is expected to “provide the best bandwidth economics in the industry.” 

Needless to say, the launch of the first ViaSat-3 will be a pivotal moment for the company and a generational update 22,236 miles above Earth. Viasat said last week that it’s begun mechanical integration of ViaSat-3 Americas, attaching solar arrays, reflectors, and other accessories from the spacecraft wardrobe. Once that’s done, the satellite will be fully configured for launch for the first time. 

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In Other News

• Northrop Grumman ($NOC) booked three Falcon 9 launches to carry out ISS resupply missions. The missions, set to start in H2 ’23, should hold Northrop over as it develops an upgraded Antares rocket without Russian-made engines. 

• Related: Northrop and Firefly said yesterday that they’re teaming up to co-develop “American-built,” first-stage engines for the upgraded Antares. 

• NASA is looking for a new launch partner to get its TROPICS cubesats to orbit after Astra decided to ditch its Rocket 3.3 program. Astra’s decision caught NASA by surprise, SpaceNews reports.

• Russia launched an Iranian satellite from Kazakhstan.

The View from Utah

We have awesome neighbors at the Airbnb we booked for SmallSat.