UK companies have received nearly £15 million from the UK Space Agency, through the European Space Agency’s Pioneer Partnership Programme, to develop the trio of satellites due to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Lacuna Space, based in Oxfordshire, aims to simplify and reduce the cost of connecting sensors to the internet, reaching every corner on Earth using small satellites to support the IoT.
Lacuna sensors can be used to monitor the environment, track wildlife and help farmers by providing data on the health of cattle and crops and for water and soil management.
Two of the satellites, built by Spire, in Glasgow, will develop optical intersatellite links (ISL) which will enable constellations of satellites to become integrated networks in space, capable of delivering very high volumes of data at speed to anywhere in the world, including remote and rural areas, disaster areas and at sea.
Spire has been supported by the UK Space Agency, through the European Space Agency’s Pioneer Partnership Programme with nearly £9 million of total funding, to develop a range of innovative technologies and data platforms including the pair of satellites planned for tomorrow’s launch.
The third satellite is built by In-Space Missions, based in Hampshire, supported by £4.9 million of funding for this and future validation missions expected to launch in 2022/2023. The Faraday Phoenix satellite incorporates payloads for six customers including Airbus, Lacuna, SatixFy and Aeternum.
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is due to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8pm BST on Friday 25th June.
Taxi ride to space – other payloads on the Faraday Phoenix mission:
The mission will fly In-Space’s own Babel payload as the first incarnation of a future digital, uploadable payload offering within the Faraday service. This first version is a high gain, wideband software defined radio with enabling a number of different applications to be uploaded and exercised – from tracking ship radars to creating heat maps of 4G mobile usage.
SatixFy Space Systems, based in Manchester, is using the mission to demonstrate their satcom technology in space for the first time. SatixFy’scubesat computer will be the most capable product of its type on the market, supporting up to 4Gbps of data transmission, and allowing companies to process large amounts of data in orbit.
The Airbus Prometheus 1 payload, built in Portsmouth, with a Software Defined Radio will be able to survey radio spectrum usage across the world from orbit, detect radar tracking of the Faraday Phoenix satellite, and potentially identify and locate search and rescue beacons.