Link up (4/15/22)

Good morning, and happy Friday. Reminder: We’re off Monday. See you Tuesday!

In today's newsletter:🛰️ Intersatellite comms👨‍🚀 AI brain

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. 

On-Orbit Data Relay

Kepler has successfully demonstrated the ability to communicate between satellites on orbit, the company’s CEO Mina Mitry announced (H/T SpaceNews). Two data-relay terminals aboard satellites launched in January have been sending data packets back and forth since four days after launch, per Mitry.

Intersatellite links

The elusive tech is a big opportunity for satellite operators looking to reduce data transmission latency and increase coordination among constellations. Rather than needing to transmit data from space to the ground and back when satellites need to share information, intersatellite links allow satellites to communicate data directly back and forth.

• LEO satellites are only able to downlink 30% of the time “at best,” Mitry said, when they’re passing over ground stations. Operators can utilize intersatellite links to bring time-sensitive data back to Earth faster.

• NASA currently operates a constellation, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, that provides this service, but it’s planning to decommission it and hand the capability off to the commercial sector within a decade or so.

The problem is that on-orbit communications systems are quite energy-intensive. It’s not worth it for most companies to create bespoke space-based comms systems. Kepler wants to take on that market by launching their own communications network, Aether: “our antennas are bigger so their antennas can be smaller,” Mitry said.

Kepler’s solution

The company plans to begin launching Aether, its planned data-relay constellation, early next year. The terminals they’re testing out now are meant to connect with those satellites in the future to enable faster and higher-volume communications between satellites. The data terminals operate on the S-band, and can transmit data to one another at varying distances, per Mitry. 

Kepler has secured spectrum rights from German regulators to put its data terminals on ~115,000 satellites in the coming years, and is independently working to ensure there aren’t any S-band conflicts.

In Other News

• Space Capital published its Q1 “Space Investment Quarterly” report. 

• NASA scrubbed its third SLS wet dress rehearsal attempt. The agency is holding a telecon at 3 PM today to discuss initial findings from the attempts.

• Avanti cut its debt down to $260M from $810M after investors agreed to accept equity in exchange for debt (H/T SpaceNews).

• Viasat is donating high-speed internet to Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia through a partnership with the country’s Košice region.

• Capella Space unveiled three new data products that it says will automate tasking on its SAR remote sensing satellites: Vessel Detection, Change Detection, and Global Change Monitoring.

• PLD Space, a Spanish launch startup, announced it has completed a static fire test for its Miura 1 small launch vehicle.

• ULA has delivered the first stage of an Atlas V rocket to Florida in advance of the Starliner mission planned for May. The stage took an unusual route, traveling on NASA’s Pegasus barge among other transport methods.

The View from AI Brain

OpenAI, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence research lab, recently released DALL·E 2, a text-to-art generative tool. Here are 9 results from DALL·E 2 when fed the prompt “An astronaut riding a horse in space.”

Payload Job Board