{"id":74813,"date":"2015-03-16T19:34:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T11:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/green-satellites-on-the-go-new-industries-open-the-door-to-the-satellite-of-the-future\/"},"modified":"2015-03-16T19:34:15","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T11:34:15","slug":"green-satellites-on-the-go-new-industries-open-the-door-to-the-satellite-of-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/green-satellites-on-the-go-new-industries-open-the-door-to-the-satellite-of-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Satellites On-the-Go: New Industries Open the Door to the Satellite of the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

[Via Satellite 03-16-2015] The satellite of the future is closer than you think. According to Jean-Luc Froeliger, vice president of satellite operations and engineering at Intelsat<\/strong>, off-the-shelf, configurable satellites are only a 10-year jump from now. Panelists at Monday\u2019s SATELLITE 2015 session, \u201cThis is Not Your Grandfather\u2019s Satellite,\u201d noted that competition and innovation in the industry are picking up rapidly driven by Silicon Valley-type advancements in software and thinking, a smallsat industry that is moving automation rapidly forward, and a launch landscape that is cheaper and more accessible than ever before.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpace systems today are mainly single pieces, monolithic, not reusable, not reconfigurable. We believe creating a flexible and modular system for a satellite would help a lot,\u201d said Bernd Sommer, head of automation and robotics at the German Aerospace Center and Space Administration<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

New industries are placing these types of advancements at our fingertips. Smallsat startups are driving these innovations, turning to Silicon Valley\u2019s novel and entrepreneurial mentality and resources to make up for what they lack in capital. Now, with launches only costing hundreds of thousands of dollars as opposed to millions, the small companies can launch more often than ever before, according to Jenny Barna, launch manager at Spire<\/strong>, a nanosatellite startup company. These frequent launches will allow companies, engineers, and developers to test out new hardware, software, and designs in orbit more rapidly than ever before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the Silicon Valley approach, with the new smallsat launch approach, we can launch every month if we want to and we can iterate our software, iterate our technology \u2026 With constant launches we\u2019ll be more like Silicon Valley, with different versions and whatever is the newest and freshest will go up,\u201d said Barna. And to accompany the Silicon Valley mentality is the software to go along with it, which is evolving the smallsat industry as we speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore and more it\u2019s all about software and innovation,\u201d said Barna, noting that many of her colleagues are software engineers. \u201cThat software-driven technology is key.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smallsat startups are driving the market in other ways as well, configuring hardware to fit the needs and resources of small businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re absolutely seeing the smallsat companies drive automation because they have to,\u201d said Stuart Dautridge, vice president of advanced technology at Kratos Defense and Security Solutions<\/strong>. \u201cIf you\u2019re putting up a satellite for a couple hundred thousand dollars you\u2019re not going to have three people man it full time for 10 years \u2014 the manning of that satellite would cost more than the whole mission \u2014 so they\u2019re driving a lot of automation because of necessity and because of cost. I think you\u2019re going to see that push automation to the larger satellite market as it gets proven out; more standardized and more accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the systems are moving to what Sommer calls \u201cLegos in space,\u201d or designs that are highly reconfigurable in orbit. This would increase maintainability through flexible and modular building blocks that would be readily available off-the-shelf as well as customizable. To get there, though, the entire industry will have to work together to develop, understand, and accept the new technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a plethora of new technologies \u2014 additive manufacturing being a large one \u2014 but it takes time to gain acceptance by many of our manufacturers because of the inherent reliability that they want to build into their systems at their customers\u2019 demand,\u201d said Warren Yasuhara, vice president of space systems at Aerojet Rockedyne<\/strong>, citing electric propulsion, which has been around for 20 years but is just now gaining acceptance in the larger market.<\/p>\n

These new landscapes and designs are taking shape as mentalities change, budding technologies such as electronic propulsion become cheaper and, above all, more accepted.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, no one is sure what the future will bring, but it\u2019s not far off, and already the doors are opening to new designs and ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future, for me, looks like all new constellation architectures. With all the new launch opportunities, particularly with new, dedicated satellite launchers, we\u2019ll be able to have on-demand launches,\u201d said Barna. \u201cWhen small satellite companies all of the sudden can launch whenever they want to, wherever they want to, I think you\u2019re going to see a whole new evolution of what constellations look like. And because we\u2019re on our dedicated rides and we launch all the time, that will drive the market to come up with all new propulsion and [Attitude Determination and Control] ADCS systems and all kinds of new software and hardware and sensors.\u201d<\/p>\n

With smallsat startups bringing new technology and industry to the table, however, they continue to look to traditional companies for guidance as they forge ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew space sits on the shoulders of old space,\u201d said Barna. \u201cWe know that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sustainable Satellites<\/b><\/p>\n

With nearly 60,000 objects in orbit, 13,000 of which are in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), being able to configure, reconfigure, maintain, and then de-orbit satellites at will is where companies are focusing their efforts. Sustainable satellites are not only important when it comes to making way to launch spacecraft into LEO, but in lowering costs by keeping current satellites in orbit for longer and making room for innovation and maintenance on spacecraft already in orbit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not enough to just remove space debris. We need to avoid it, and to do that we need to create sustainable spacecraft. And we think a flexible and modular system will help with that,\u201d said Bernd Sommer, head of automation and robotics at the German Aerospace Center and Space Administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Via Satellite 03-16-2015] The satellite of the future is closer than you think. According to Jean-Luc Froeliger, vice president of satellite operations and engineering at Intelsat, off-the-shelf, configurable satellites are only a 10-year jump from now. Panelists at Monday\u2019s SATELLITE 2015 session, \u201cThis is Not Your Grandfather\u2019s Satellite,\u201d noted that competition and innovation in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74814,"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":[],"class_list":["post-74813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74813"}],"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=74813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}