Spaceflight Industries

Spaceflight Industries
Private
Industry Aerospace
Founded 2010 (2010)
Founder Jason Andrews
Headquarters Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Website spaceflightindustries.com

Spaceflight Industries, Inc. is a private aerospace company based out of Seattle, Washington that specializes in organizing rideshare space launches of secondary payloads and geospatial intelligence services.[1]

Spaceflight Industries has two primary business services: Spaceflight, their launch rideshare service, and BlackSky, their geospatial intelligence service.

History

Spaceflight Industries was founded in 2010 by Jason Andrews, with Curt Blake joining soon thereafter as SVP & General Counsel.[2] Prior to founding Spaceflight, Mr. Andrews worked at Kistler Aerospace and founded Andrews Space in 1999. Mr. Blake has previous experience at Microsoft, Starwave, SpaceDev, and GotVoice.[3] Spaceflight's mission is to fundamentally improve access to space by making launch more routine, more cost effective, and with standard flight interfaces.

Spaceflight

The traditional business model for accessing space is one satellite to one launch vehicle.[4] With the miniaturization of satellite hardware and improved communication capabilities, satellites have decreased in size and grown more powerful following Moore's Law. Spaceflight buys excess capacity from commercial launch vehicles, sells the capacity to a number of "rideshare" secondary payloads, and integrates all of the secondary satellites as one discrete unit to the launch vehicle, providing a significant price discount to reach orbit compared to buying an entire launch vehicle.[5][6]

Launch payload sizes vary from 1 kg up to 300 kg micro satellites and use a variety of space launch vehicles, such as Antares, Dnepr, Soyuz, and Falcon 9, as well as from the International Space Station.[7]

The company also began offering "dedicated rideshare," a launch alternative that lowers launch prices for organizations seeking access to space, maximizes utilization of the launch vehicle, and apportions cost based on schedule control and other service features. Lead customers pay for schedule control and other accoutrements of a traditional "primary" customer, but see their price reduced by including rideshare customers on the launch. Likewise, the traditional rideshare customers pay less because lead customers pay a disproportionate amount of the entire launch vehicle cost in order to retain schedule control.[8]

Spaceflight is in the process of developing its SHERPA family, a hosted payload and in-space transportation system that would help make launch of secondary payloads more cost effective to the correct orbit. SHERPA enables more access to space for small spacecraft and hosted payloads, and would be able to transport rideshare payloads to the Moon and Mars.[9][10]

Past and future missions

Spaceflight launched its first satellites, manifested by NASA Ames Research Center and Planet Labs, on board the Antares A-ONE and Bion-M No.1 missions in April 2013, respectively on the Antares 110 and Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicles.[11] As of January 2017, Spaceflight had delivered 78 payloads over 12 launches, piggybacking on, Antares, Dnepr, PSLV and Soyuz-2 rockets, or on board Cygnus and Dragon spacecraft to the ISS.[12][13]

In October 2015, Spaceflight Industries booked a launch slot on a Falcon 9 to deliver the 500-kg lunar lander built by SpaceIL for the Google Lunar X-Prize towards the end of 2017.[14] The rocket ride will be shared with a dozen other small payloads ranging from 50 kg to 575 kg.[15]

In November 2016, Part-Time Scientists signed a launch contract with Spaceflight Industries for the delivery of its lander as a secondary payload on a vehicle yet to be identified, but most likely a SpaceX Falcon 9.[16][17]

BlackSky

Through BlackSky, Spaceflight Industries offers geospatial intelligence services. This includes access to satellite imagery from 10 high-resolution imaging satellites through BlackSky Spectra.[18]

BlackSky is also building and operating their own earth-imaging satellites. Their first, Pathfinder-1, was launched on 26 September 2016 and the first pictures released publicly on 14 November 2016.[19] The company is aiming for a 60-satellite constellation with 1-meter resolution.[20] The satellite constellation will be built by LeoStella LLC, a joint venture between Spaceflight Industries and Thales Alenia Space.[21]

References

  1. ↑ "Spaceflight Industries About page".
  2. ↑ "Spaceflight Hires Curt Blake, Seasoned Entrepreneur And Executive, As Senior Vice President And General Counsel". 13 October 2011. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  3. ↑ "Company Experience". Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  4. ↑ "Nanosats are go!". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2016-05-09.
  5. ↑ "Spaceflight Inc. to Fly Payloads on LauncherOne". 20 July 2012. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  6. ↑ "Spaceflight Inc. Tapped To Find Rides for STP Satellite". Space News, 30 April 2012.
  7. ↑ "Spaceflight Inc. and SpaceX Sign Secondary Payload Deal". SpaceRef. 11 June 2012. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  8. ↑ "SatMagazine". www.satmagazine.com. Retrieved 2016-05-09.
  9. ↑ "Spaceflight Completes SHERPA Design Review, Announces Hosted Payload Opportunities". Parabolic Arc. 7 August 2013. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  10. ↑ Rosenberg, Zach. "Spaceflight Inc unveils the Sherpa in-space tug". FlightGlobal, 7 May 2012
  11. ↑ "Five Spacecraft Launched By Two Launch Vehicles From Two Continents". Space News, 23 April 2013.
  12. ↑ "Launch Services - Past Launches". Spaceflight Industries. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
  13. ↑ Krebs, Gunter. "BlackSky Global 1, 2, 3, 4 / BlackSky Pathfinder 1, 2". Gunter's Space Page. Archived from the original on December 23, 2016. Retrieved February 12, 2017.
  14. ↑ Wall, Mike (2015-10-07). "Private Moon Race Heats Up with 1st Verified Launch Deal". space.com. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
  15. ↑ "To the Moon!" (press release). Spaceflight Industries. 2015-10-07. Retrieved 2016-01-07.
  16. ↑ "Moon-Race Team Reserves Rocket to Land Rovers Near Apollo 17 Site". Space.com. Retrieved 2016-12-04.
  17. ↑ "German X Prize team announces launch contract - SpaceNews.com". SpaceNews.com. 2016-11-29. Retrieved 2016-12-04.
  18. ↑ "Introducing BlackSky Spectra".
  19. ↑ "Hello Beautiful! Our first pictures from Pathfinder-1".
  20. ↑ "BlackSky website".
  21. ↑ "Thales Alenia Space, Telespazio and Spaceflight Industries Finalize Alliance to Manufacture Smallsats at Scale and Deliver Innovative Geospatial Services" (Press release). Business Wire. 13 March 2018. Retrieved 13 March 2018.
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