{"id":17289,"date":"2023-06-06T17:52:08","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T09:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/leostellas-ceo-works-on-the-next-phase-of-evolution-for-the-satellite-revolution\/"},"modified":"2023-06-06T17:52:08","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T09:52:08","slug":"leostellas-ceo-works-on-the-next-phase-of-evolution-for-the-satellite-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/leostellas-ceo-works-on-the-next-phase-of-evolution-for-the-satellite-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"LeoStella\u2019s CEO works on the next phase of evolution for the satellite revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"LeoStella
Former Boeing engineer Tim Kienberger became LeoStella\u2019s CEO in January. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TUKWILA, Wash. \u2014 Will LeoStella go beyond LEO?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been four years since LeoStella, a joint venture created by BlackSky and Thales Alenia Space, opened the doors of its Tukwila factory and began building Earth observation satellites that BlackSky could launch into low Earth orbit, otherwise known as LEO. <\/p>\n

Since then, the company has taken on other customers as well \u2014 including Loft Orbital Solutions, which offers a turnkey solution for flying and operating satellite payloads; and NorthStar Earth and Space, which is building a satellite constellation to monitor space traffic.<\/p>\n

This week, LeoStella announced the completion and delivery of its 20th satellite \u2014 which happens to be the third satellite it\u2019s built for Loft Orbital.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Tim Kienberger is getting settled in as LeoStella\u2019s new CEO. He took over the company\u2019s top post in January, after building up decades of experience at other aerospace and defense companies such as Boeing and L3Harris.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they hired me to do was to grow the business,\u201d Kienberger told GeekWire.<\/p>\n

The sky just might literally be the limit when it comes to LeoStella\u2019s future growth. During last week\u2019s interview at LeoStella\u2019s Tukwila HQ, Kienberger said the company could eventually take aim at missions beyond Earth orbit \u2014 to support missions to the moon, for example, or to help humanity get to Mars.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty excited to be in this job,\u201d he said. \u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of growth potential here, and it\u2019s rather unique to create a facility like this in Seattle. There used to be one space operation in Seattle, and it was called Boeing. It\u2019s exciting to see the explosion of the space industry here.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"LeoStella
LeoStella\u2019s satellite manufacturing facility is in a business park in Tukwila. (Sabey Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Seattle area is arguably on track to become the world champion of satellite building, at least on the basis of sheer numbers. SpaceX\u2019s Starlink development and manufacturing facility in Redmond, Wash., has built roughly half of the satellites currently operating in orbit, and Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper is gearing up to build thousands more in Kirkland, the Seattle suburb that\u2019s next door to Redmond. <\/p>\n

Kienberger doesn\u2019t consider SpaceX or Amazon to be competitors. He said he prefers to focus on a \u201csweet spot\u201d in the satellite market: Instead of turning out expensive, custom-designed satellites one at a time, or building thousands of satellites for a mega-constellation, LeoStella is focusing on helping its customers build out midsize constellations consisting of 10 to 50 satellites.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really want to focus on helping customers deliver a capability, and that\u2019s what that constellation size does,\u201d Kienberger said. \u201cBlackSky is a great example.\u201d<\/p>\n

BlackSky already has 16 Earth-watching Global satellites in orbit, sending down imagery on a near-real-time basis for its geospatial data platform. Most of those satellites were built by LeoStella, and now the company is shifting to build an upgraded version of the satellite, known as Gen-3.<\/p>\n

LeoStella\u2019s 22,000-square-foot headquarters in Tukwila is configured to produce up to 40 satellites annually, but the manufacturing facility can be expanded to increase yearly production to 60 satellites. LeoStella\u2019s workforce is also primed for expansion: The company currently employs 77 full-time employees and contractors, but it\u2019s aiming to boost its workforce to 95 by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

What will those new hires be doing? And what markets will LeoStella expand into? Kienberger provided some hints during last week\u2019s Q&A. Here are some of the highlights, edited for brevity and clarity: <\/p>\n

GeekWire: BlackSky is pretty much focused on imaging. Is that what you\u2019re continuing to look at for further opportunities?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kienberger:<\/strong> \u201cNo, we\u2019re not going to limit ourselves just to Earth observation imaging. We have a customer looking at an alternate method for GPS. We have a customer asking if we could support a LEO-based communications mission. We\u2019re talking to another customer who wants to do a classified mission. They won\u2019t tell us what it is, so, OK, that\u2019s fine. We\u2019ll sell them the bus [that is, the structural chassis of a satellite]. They like the bus, and then they\u2019ll finish the product somewhere else. That\u2019s not unlike what we did for Loft. We basically sold them the bus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=quREvafRrNo
\n<\/figure>\n

Q: What\u2019s your view of the satellite market? Is it a good business to be in?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> \u201cIt has been and still is a very exciting time, especially to be in the small-sat side of the space industry. Having worked in the space industry for a long time, I\u2019m seeing how small satellites have gotten more reliable. We produce satellites very efficiently with a high success record here, which is great. Launch costs are coming down, which means that there are a lot more opportunities to launch vehicles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: Are there some technologies at LeoStella that have the potential to revolutionize the field? Or is it more the case that there\u2019s no magic bullet, that it\u2019s a question of economizing here and there, and somehow finding ways to get the costs down?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>\u201cThere is a magic bullet, but it\u2019s not a satellite technology. The way that we\u2019ve driven the cost down is the automated manufacturing system. We\u2019ve thought through how the workflow needs to be set up, how to get the rate flow through here. How do I manage inventory from bringing it in the door all the way through the finished product, and can I do that in a more automated fashion?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then we\u2019re taking a slightly different approach in qualification. You can take a very conservative approach, where you qualify everything all the time. We\u2019re taking what I would traditionally call more of a qualified similarity approach, which means we don\u2019t need to do full qualification on everything. We certainly do a level of qualification on everything that goes out the door, but not the full set of thermal vacuum cycling on everything. There\u2019s some risk there, but so far it\u2019s paid off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: Do you ever have a vision of what this industry is going to be like, maybe 10 years from now? A lot of people have said that if you get launch costs down, if you get the cost of manufacturing a satellite down to a certain point, you unlock capabilities we couldn\u2019t dream of. Do you ever dream about what that world might be like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> \u201cWell, I tend to dream all the time, but I try to temper my dreams and be realistic. I think launch cost is probably the big driver at the moment. There are a number of data services companies who are startups, who want to build a capability, but they certainly don\u2019t want to spend $100 million to deploy 10 satellites on orbit. If they could spend $20 million or $30 million, they might find an investor who says, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s worth making the investment. Let\u2019s go try that business model and see if it pans out.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest swinger there, first and foremost, is going to be on the launch services side. To cut down spacecraft costs further, there\u2019s technology coming along that will help. Printed technology is certainly going to drive down costs in the long run. Electric propulsion, once upon a time, was pretty expensive. Now we\u2019re integrating electric propulsion into our new vehicles, not at a premium plus. So that\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: Is that for the BlackSky Gen-3 satellites?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> \u201cIt is. \u2026 So, there are certainly new technologies that we want to leverage to stay cost-effective, though you don\u2019t want to be on the cusp of new technology that drives your product cost back up. Just like the advent of flat screens: The first flat screen on the market was $10,000. Now you can go to any store and buy one much larger than the first one for a few hundred dollars, with much higher quality.<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnology needs to continue to innovate. That will eventually drive costs further down across a number of areas. If we can come up with more effective power methods and more efficient propulsion methods, those are probably the two biggest swingers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: Some people talk about next-generation radioisotope batteries. Is that the sort of thing you\u2019re looking forward to?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: <\/strong>\u201cYeah, but there\u2019s also nuclear propulsion. When you talk about nuclear energy and how you could apply that, it\u2019s not an infinite source, but it\u2019s a semi-infinite source. Right now, all propulsion systems basically run on a fuel. Even electric propulsion runs on a fuel that gets pushed through the system. Nuclear propulsion would run on a fuel, based on the radiation that comes up, but it will run for quite a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s part of how you advance your mission space farther out. And I think that\u2019s where we\u2019re going in the future. We\u2019re seeing an explosion in low Earth orbit for lots of small satellites. There\u2019s a large push to cislunar orbit, and that\u2019s largely driven by both private industry and the government pushing to go to Mars.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you need gateways. You need infrastructure. You need traffic management to make sure satellites are not running into each other. There\u2019s going to be an explosion of this class of satellite, like the ones sitting over there [gesturing to the factory floor]. If I build a constellation of 30 of those, they can do \u2018spacewatch\u2019 out there and help guide satellites going to the moon, from the moon, or to and from Mars through the Gateway. So, coming up with fuel sources that last longer will unlock our ability to operate further out into space. And that\u2019s going to expand even more demand into the market at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q: So LeoStella is looking beyond LEO?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/strong> \u201cAt some point, yes. Not tomorrow, but it\u2019s on our future vision list.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Boeing engineer Tim Kienberger became LeoStella\u2019s CEO in January. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle) TUKWILA, Wash. \u2014 Will LeoStella go beyond LEO? It\u2019s been four years since LeoStella, a joint venture created by BlackSky and Thales Alenia Space, opened the doors of its Tukwila factory and began building Earth observation satellites that BlackSky could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4542,20,442,4561],"class_list":["post-17289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-leostella","tag-satellite","tag-satellites","tag-tim-kienberger"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}