{"id":18582,"date":"2018-04-03T21:14:58","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T13:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/deep-space-industries-will-equip-blacksky-satellites-with-water-spraying-thrusters\/"},"modified":"2018-04-03T21:14:58","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T13:14:58","slug":"deep-space-industries-will-equip-blacksky-satellites-with-water-spraying-thrusters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/deep-space-industries-will-equip-blacksky-satellites-with-water-spraying-thrusters\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Space Industries will equip BlackSky satellites with water-spraying thrusters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Comet
Deep Space Industries\u2019 Comet propulsion system uses water vapor as propellant. (DSI Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

California-based Deep Space Industries says it has signed a contract to provide water-spraying thrusters for the BlackSky Earth observation satellites that are due to be built in Seattle.<\/p>\n

The contract covers an initial block of 20 Comet water-based satellite propulsion systems. The systems expel superheated water vapor as propellant to adjust the attitude of small spacecraft in orbit.<\/p>\n

Twenty satellites are scheduled to go into orbit by 2020 in the first phase of an Earth observation effort managed by BlackSky, a subsidiary of Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries. The first satellite, dubbed Global-1, is due for launch this year.<\/p>\n

Last month, Spaceflight Industries laid out the details of a partnership deal involving The Space Alliance, which is a French-Italian joint venture between Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio.<\/p>\n

One of the provisions of the deal set up a new company called LeoStella, which is owned 50-50 by Spaceflight Industries and Thales Alenia Space. LeoStella is tasked with building BlackSky\u2019s satellites in Seattle.<\/p>\n

Eventually, BlackSky plans to have 60 satellites in low Earth orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe launch-safe propulsion features of the Comet system are well-aligned with BlackSky\u2019s performance needs to enable affordable and flexible satellite systems,\u201d Nick Merski, vice president of space operations for Spaceflight Industries, said in a news release. \u201cWe are looking forward to working with the DSI team on this and future projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deep Space Industries CEO William Miller agreed that the low-pressure, non-toxic system should work well for what BlackSky has in mind. \u201cCustomers like LeoStella are exactly why we developed the Comet propulsion system,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The contract\u2019s financial terms were not disclosed.<\/p>\n

Deep Space Industries says the Comet electrothermal thruster system is the first in what it expects will be a full line of \u201cgreen\u201d propulsion systems for small satellites.<\/p>\n

The Silicon Valley company was founded in 2013 as an asteroid mining venture, and has since opened offices in Florida and Luxembourg as well. The use of water as a propellant meshes with DSI\u2019s asteroid aspirations, because water is regarded as the likeliest resource to be found on asteroids.<\/p>\n

DSI\u2019s main rival in the asteroid mining market is Planetary Resources, which is headquartered in Redmond, Wash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deep Space Industries\u2019 Comet propulsion system uses water vapor as propellant. (DSI Illustration) California-based Deep Space Industries says it has signed a contract to provide water-spraying thrusters for the BlackSky Earth observation satellites that are due to be built in Seattle. The contract covers an initial block of 20 Comet water-based satellite propulsion systems. The […]<\/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":[2128,5088,4542,20,2341],"class_list":["post-18582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blacksky-global","tag-deep-space-industries","tag-leostella","tag-satellite","tag-spaceflight-industries"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18582"}],"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=18582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}