Let it bee (6/29/23)

Good morning. Payload is on the hunt for our inaugural class of Payload Pioneers, a group of 30 young disruptors from startups, commercial entities, the investment community, the government, and everywhere in between. We’ll be unveiling our list of winners this fall. Check out the full criteria and submit your nominations here! Nominations will be open until July 31.

In today's edition...
🐝 Edgybee’s US plans
🧭 Aussie Moon contract
📝 The contract report

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Edgybees’ American Hive is Buzzing, Officials Say

Ken Campbell, a former Navy EOD officer and the newly-tapped head of Edgybee’s US arm, told Payload that it was an “easy decision” to come out of retirement to work with Edgybees because he believes the company’s tech can be a game-changer in the hands of more defense and intelligence customers.

Edgybees 101: The Israeli-based company is working to seamlessly integrate data and images from different sources, such as satellites, aircraft, and drones to give customers the most accurate data in real time.

By linking landmarks to precise GPS coordinates that will remain the same if the data is collected by different platforms or on different days, the technology also allows information, like maps or building tags, to be layered over images, Edgybees CEO Shay Har-Noy told Payload.

Use cases: The technology will be especially useful to defense and intelligence clients, according to Har-Noy and Campbell, though it could also help state-level officials looking to track flooding or wildfires.

Targeting is an obvious use for the technology within defense circles. “We say, this corner of the building is at this GPS coordinate, hard stop, and it’s locked,” Har-Noy said. “It’s the same building you’re talking about, it’s not the neighbor.”

It will also allow drone pilots to view more information, including road maps, broader satellite imagery, and an intel report on where schools or hospitals are located, overlaid on a single screen, he said.

Land of the bee: The company opened a new US entity last month specifically to boost its relationship with the government and defense sectors.

“My portfolio is primarily designed to demonstrate [the] value proposition to the intelligence community and DoD, but also to DHS and at a certain level even state and local consumers,” Campbell told Payload. “What we provide them is one pane of glass. We’re getting rid of all those screens and…enriching it with other data right there on the same screen.”

Drone of the brave: There are multiple internal stories of how Edgybees got its unique name. The company started off using drones to be augmented reality video games before pivoting to space, and some thought the drones looked like bees that were angry and/or edgy. But Campbell said he heard that one of the company’s drones flew through a beehive while on a mission in Israel and came back “loaded with pissed off bees.”

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$3.4M for Lunar Landing Navigation

Advanced Navigation, a lunar navigation startup, won an AUD 5.2M ($3.4M) Australian Space Agency grant to accelerate development of its lunar lander LiDAV sensor tech, the company announced yesterday. The funding supports NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services.

Advanced Navigation 🤝$LUNR: Advanced Navigation is developing a novel lunar sensory stem called light detection altimetry and velocimetry (LiDAV), which will be demoed on Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander.

The company hopes the technology will be rated for commercial lunar lander integration by 2026.

LiDAV school: LiDAV works by emitting laser beams and measuring the time it takes to hit a target and bounce back. By transmitting multiple beams, LiDAV sensors can give a holistic navigation reading, analyzing a spacecraft’s position, elevation, and speed.

• LiDAV works even when visual references are obscured by dust or darkness, or when a GPS signal is unavailable.

• The technology is particularly useful for lunar landings, as it enables fully autonomous landings on the treacherous surface.

Hard landing: There are a number of reasons why lunar landings are incredibly difficult, with navigation being near the top. Recently, ispace’s crash landing was attributed to an onboard software system that miscalculated an altitude reading.

See You This Afternoon!

Is your company or office releasing news that you’d love to see covered in Payload? We’re excited to be hosting a webinar on “How to Pitch Journalists,” that will give a behind-the-scenes look at how space companies can best share their stories with the press. We’ll talk about topics such as:

• What are journalists looking for in a story?

• Do I need to write a press release?

• The difference between embargoed and exclusive stories.

In Other News

• ESA’s EarthCARE mission will launch on a Falcon 9 instead of Vega-C, the agency’s chief said.

• King Charles III revealed his “Astra Carta” seal for space sustainability.

• The Chinese spy balloon used US-made tech to collect pictures and videos.

• Shrimp buffets, strip clubs and…space? A commercial real estate developer is pushing to build a spaceport outside of Vegas.

• The Perseverance rover produced a record amount of oxygen on Mars.

• Marco Rubio has heard multiple firsthand accounts of UFOs from high-clearance individuals.

The View from Space

JWST detected a carbon compound that can be a building block for more complex carbon-based molecules in a young star system 1,350 light-years from Earth.