{"id":18392,"date":"2018-08-21T18:39:49","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T10:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/with-spaceflights-help-leostella-moves-ahead-with-seattle-area-satellite-factory\/"},"modified":"2018-08-21T18:39:49","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T10:39:49","slug":"with-spaceflights-help-leostella-moves-ahead-with-seattle-area-satellite-factory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/with-spaceflights-help-leostella-moves-ahead-with-seattle-area-satellite-factory\/","title":{"rendered":"With Spaceflight\u2019s help, LeoStella moves ahead with Seattle-area satellite factory"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_441597\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-441597\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-441597\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180820-leostella3-630x470.png\" alt=\"LeoStella building in Tukwila\" width=\"630\" height=\"470\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180820-leostella3-630x470.png 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180820-leostella3-768x573.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180820-leostella3.png 1211w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-441597\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">LeoStella\u2019s satellite manufacturing facility will be in a business park in Tukwila. (Sabey Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>TUKWILA, Wash.&nbsp;\u2014 Today it\u2019s an&nbsp;empty office building in a business park south of Seattle, not far from a Mexican restaurant and an organic nursery. But within just a few months, the place will be turning out two to three satellites per month for a U.S.-European joint venture called LeoStella.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ll have a nice cafeteria, too,\u201d LeoStella CEO Chris Chautard&nbsp;joked.<\/p>\n<p>LeoStella is a 50-50 joint venture owned by Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries and Thales Alenia Space, a French-Italian heavyweight of the aerospace industry. The hookup is part of a $150 million deal announced in March.<\/p>\n<p>To make the arrangements even more tangled, LeoStella\u2019s first customer is BlackSky, a Spaceflight Industries subsidiary that\u2019s planning to put a constellation of 60 Earth-observing satellites into orbit.<\/p>\n<p>BlackSky already built the Global constellation\u2019s first four satellites in-house, for launch on rockets such as India\u2019s PSLV, SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 and Rocket Lab\u2019s Electron. LeoStella is tasked with building 20 more of the 120-pound (55-kilogram) satellites over the next year or two.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Timelapse: Watch BlackSky build its Global-1 satellite\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RaxPy32X6NM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.75\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"600\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 600px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In addition to the cafeteria, LeoStella\u2019s new 20,000-square-foot facility in Tukwila will have everything you\u2019d expect at a satellite factory, including test labs, a clean room and offices for the engineers and executives. Chautard told GeekWire that production is due to begin in October or November, which means the building\u2019s empty space will have to be filled up quickly.<\/p>\n<p>By the end of this year, LeoStella\u2019s headquarters should house about 40 employees, including some who have come over from BlackSky and Spaceflight, said Nicholas Merski, vice president of space operations at Spaceflight Industries.<\/p>\n<p>BlackSky\u2019s first 24 satellites are designed to provide visual and multispectral Earth imagery at resolutions as fine as 1 meter per pixel, at a rapid orbital revisit rate. The goal is to make on-demand pictures available within 90 minutes of an overflight, at a cost of $90 per image.<\/p>\n<p>Such images could be used to track what\u2019s happening during a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis, monitor shipping in near-real time, or provide detailed data for crop forecasts or urban planning. The imagery also will be fed into BlackSky\u2019s Spectra geospatial data platform, along with views from other satellites and on-the-ground data sources.<\/p>\n<p>By the time LeoStella finishes work on its first 20 satellites, its engineers are due to draw up the design for BlackSky\u2019s next-generation Block 3 satellites&nbsp;\u2014 which will have improved spatial resolution, additional frequency bands for remote sensing and other upgrades.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s just the start. \u201cWe have designed our production line to be able to produce more satellites than just for the BlackSky constellation,\u201d Chautard said. \u201cThat is, long-term, our ambition. Now we are sizing the team just for the BlackSky constellation, but we have a production tool that is able to do much, much more. So we are actively looking for customers, new contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>LeoStella\u2019s head count will grow in parallel with the business, Chautard said.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_441585\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-441585\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-441585\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180820-chautard-630x420.jpg\" alt=\"Chris Chautard\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180820-chautard-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180820-chautard-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/180820-chautard.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-441585\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chris Chautard, a veteran of Thales Alenia Space, is LeoStella\u2019s CEO. (LeoStella Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>BlackSky and LeoStella aren\u2019t the first ventures to get into the satellite data race: Other companies, such as DigitalGlobe, Planet and Spire, are offering their own combinations of imagery and geospatial data. But Merski said BlackSky is aiming to carve out a profitable niche for itself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe satellite capability that we\u2019ve built in Global has a really nice marriage of capability and price point that really fills a unique spot in the market,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are not trying to be everything to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chautard said LeoStella is also aiming for a sweet spot in satellite manufacturing, drawing upon Thales Alenia Space\u2019s experience with the&nbsp;Iridium NEXT, GlobalStar 2 and O3b constellations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe combine the best of two worlds,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are light, agile, low-cost, very reactive&nbsp;\u2014 that\u2019s all the good qualities of a small company starting up in this nice space environment in Seattle \u2014 but at the same time, we\u2019re very strong, because we\u2019re backed by Thales Alenia Space. Whenever we need some engineering force, we can tap into this formidable engineering clout we have in Thales Alenia Space.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>LeoStella\u2019s ramp-up comes three years after SpaceX put its satellite research and development center in nearby Redmond, Wash., and further validates the Seattle area\u2019s status as a significant player in the satellite game.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSeattle is going to continue to be a center of gravity for satellite development and expertise, and there\u2019s really a lot of synergy with other technological areas like cloud computing at scale,\u201d Merski said. \u201cAs you look at these space architectures, it\u2019s going to continue to be a really attractive place for people to incubate ideas about satellite hardware and the broader architectures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chautard, who recently moved to Seattle from France, agreed. \u201cI\u2019ve been working in France all the time, more or less, but yeah, Seattle is really the city of space,\u201d he said. \u201cIt made total sense to be located here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But in light of LeoStella\u2019s focus on low-cost satellite production, it didn\u2019t make sense to be in the heart of Seattle, even though Spaceflight Industries\u2019 headquarters are centrally located on Westlake Avenue. Chautard said property prices were about half as much in Tukwila, a half-hour\u2019s drive south of Seattle. Moreover, getting the building permits took about half as long, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Merski added yet another reason for going to Tukwila.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s room to grow,\u201d he said. \u201cWe see an extension of our facilities being in the potential medium-term business plan. So that was a big consideration. \u2026 We could have selected some facilities that were directly in Seattle and a little bit closer to Spaceflight. But we thought that going a little bit farther out, closer to the airport and with a little bit more room for growth, was certainly the right move.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, that ties directly to our ambitions,\u201d Chautard said. \u201cWe have big ambitions, and so we wanted to be in an area where we can grow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>More about BlackSky\u2019s satellites:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>BlackSky shows off first-generation Global satellite<\/li>\n<li>ATLAS Space Operations to provide satellite data support<\/li>\n<li>Deep Space Industries will supply water-spraying thrusters<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LeoStella\u2019s satellite manufacturing facility will be in a business park in Tukwila. (Sabey Photo) TUKWILA, Wash.&nbsp;\u2014 Today it\u2019s an&nbsp;empty office building in a business park south of Seattle, not far from a Mexican restaurant and an organic nursery. But within just a few months, the place will be turning out two to three satellites per [&hellip;]<\/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":[2128,4542,20,2341,874],"class_list":["post-18392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blacksky-global","tag-leostella","tag-satellite","tag-spaceflight-industries","tag-thales-alenia-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18392"}],"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=18392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}