Tag: Spire Global

Scottish Supercomputer Satellites Launched into Orbit

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Pioneer satellites launch on board Soyuz. (Credit: Roscomos)

A pair of Glasgow-built satellites which could revolutionise how data is downloaded from space were successfully launched on July 5

SWINDON, UK (UKSA PR) — Satellites are essential to modern life due to their application in navigation, finance, telecoms and in monitoring weather, climate change and air pollution. However, the data they collect can be slow to download due to the volume of traffic, with users often having to download very large files they don’t need just to obtain specific elements.

Spire Global operates a network of small satellites, known as nanosatellites, which collect and transmit a range of valuable data. The two new additions, supported by the UK Space Agency, will be able to process and cherry-pick data from other satellites in orbit before transmitting it to Earth, optimising and freeing up bandwidth for other tasks and users.

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ESA Pioneer Satellites Launched

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Pioneer satellites launch on board Soyuz. (Credit: Roscomos)

VOSTOCHNY COSMODROME, Russia (ESA PR) — The latest ESA Partnership Projects mission has launched two tiny supercomputing nanosatellites aboard a Soyuz rocket from Vostochny in Russia.

The parallel supercomputing scalable devices, aboard the lightweight, shoebox-sized nanosatellites, can be programmed to both receive and process data while in orbit. This enables them to select high-quality data and immediately transfer it to Earth.

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Exolaunch Integrates 28 Smallsats for July Soyuz Launch

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Soyuz launch from Vostochny Cosmodrome on Dec. 27, 2018. (Credit: Roscosmos)

BERLIN, June 28th, 2019 (Exolaunch PR) — Exolaunch, Europe’s premium launch services and separation system provider for small satellites, today confirmed successful payload integration for an upcoming Soyuz launch from the Vostochny launch site. In total, Exolaunch has contracted and integrated for launch 28 commercial and educational satellites from Germany, France, the USA, Israel, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Thailand, Ecuador, the Czech Republic and Estonia. The complete list of smallsats follows.

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NGA Announces 10 Winners in MagQuest Phase 1; Launches $1

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SPRINGFIELD, Virginia (NGA PR) — Today, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency announced 10 winners in the first phase of MagQuest, a $1.2 million global open innovation challenge to advance how we measure Earth’s magnetic field. The next phase of the challenge is now accepting detailed designs for geomagnetic data collection methodologies for the World Magnetic Model. Phase 2 is open to solvers from Phase 1, as well as new solvers who did not participate in the first phase of the challenge, and will award $1 million in cash prizes.

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UK Space Sector Created 3,400 New Jobs

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LONDON (UK Government PR) — The UK’s space sector has seen significant growth in income, exports and employment with total income now standing at £14.8 billion [$19.4 billion], Science Minister Chris Skidmore announced today.

The main findings from the independent ‘UK Space Industry: Size and Health Report’ show that, compared to the 2016 survey:

  • income up from £13.7 billion to £14.8 billion [$18 billion to $19.4 billion]
  • employment up from 38,522 to 41,900
  • exports up from £5 billion to £5.5 billion [$6.6 billion to $7.2 billion]

The report also shows that an average of 39 new companies have been added to the UK space sector every year since 2012.

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Spire Global Taps Galileo Signals to Measure Radio Occultation for Weather Community

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SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 11, 2018 (Spire Global PR) — Spire Global, Inc, the world’s largest space to cloud analytics company, today announced Spire’s most recently launched satellites are the first satellites in the world to use Galileo GNSS signals to measure radio occultation (GNSS-RO) profiles in a production capacity for the weather community.

This industry first was announced today at The Morgan Stanley Space Summit in NYC, and will now be offered to the entire audience of Spire’s global user base as a new tier of data for advanced weather prediction. These satellites are also part of a larger collaborative European Space Agency (ESA )program called ARTES Pioneer ‘Space As A Service’. The new satellite deployments represent the first Spire satellites launched through the Pioneer program for ESA, which is supported by the UK Space Agency.

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Liftoff for Pioneering Nanosats

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Pioneer Spire nanosatellite in RF test chamber. (Credit: Spire)

SRIHARIKOTA, India (ESA PR) — The first ‘Pioneer’ mission lifted off last week from Sriharikota, India, with the two inventive little nanosatellites now circling the Earth, ready for action.

The shoebox-sized satellites were launched at 04:27 GMT into low Earth orbit by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s PLSV launcher, and opened their first communication windows with their owner, Spire Global, less than an hour after they separated from the rocket.

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Rocket Lab Plans First Commercial Launch

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Eelectron rocket on the launch pad. (Credit: Rocket Lab)

Huntington Beach, Calif., 3 April 2018 (Rocket Lab PR) — US orbital launch provider Rocket Lab has today confirmed it will open a 14-day launch window this month to conduct the company’s first fully commercial launch. The mission, named ‘It’s Business Time’, includes manifested payloads for Spire Global and GeoOptics Inc., built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems.

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Rocket Lab Plans for Electron Commercial Flight

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Electron soars into orbit. (Credit: Screenshot from Rocket Lab webcast)

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., March 13, 2018 (Rocket Lab PR) — US orbital launch provider Rocket Lab has today confirmed its next launch will be the company’s first fully commercial flight. Two Lemur-2 cubesats for launch customer Spire Global will be on board the upcoming launch, with the full manifest to be confirmed in coming weeks.

The flight’s name was put to a vote on social media, with “It’s Business Time” coming out as a clear fan favourite and a continuation of company’s previous flight names, “It’s a Test” and “Still Testing”.

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UK Space Agency Backs Spire as ESA Space Mission Provider

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Swindon, England (UKSA PR) — The UK Space Agency has awarded more than £4 million to Spire Global to demonstrate cutting-edge space technology including ‘parallel super-computing’.

Today’s announcement by UK Government ministers Lord Henley and Lord Duncan, gives the green light to missions designed to showcase the technology and put UK companies into orbit faster and at a lower cost. The UK is the largest funder of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Satellites (ARTES) programme, which transforms research into successful commercial projects.

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Satellites Lost in the Soyuz Launch Failure

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Soyuz rocket blasts off from Vostochny on Nov. 28, 2017. (Credit: Roscosmos)

The failed launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket on Tuesday resulted in the loss of a Russian weather satellite and 18 CubeSats that were aboard as secondary payloads. The table below provides details about the lost spacecraft.

SATELLITES LOST IN SOYUZ LAUNCH FAILURE
SATELLITE NO.
OWNER
FUNCTIONS
 Meteor M2-1 1Russian GovernmentFourth generation weather satellite; insured for insured for 2.5 billion rubles ($42.6 million)
Lemur-2 10Spire GlobalCommercial weather monitoring and ship tracking
Vantage 2 1 Telesat (Canada)Ka band prototype for 117 satellite constellation that will provide low-latency broadband links for planes, ships and remote locations. Twin Vantage 1 prototype scheduled for launch aboard an Indian PSLV in late December or early January.
Landmapper-BC 2Astro DigitalEarth imaging
 SEAM 1KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden)Ionospheric measurements magnetic and electric fields
 D-Star One 1German Orbital Systems & iSky Technology (Czech Republic)Amateur radio
Baumanets 2 1 Bauman Moscow State Technical UniversityEducational satellite with optical camera and communications experiment
AISSat 31
 Norwegian Space CenterShip tracking
IDEA OSG 1 1ASTROSCALESpace debris using sensors developed by JAXA. Mission sponsored by OSG Corporation, a Japanese tool maker.











Rocket Lab Electron Launch Window Set to Open on Dec. 8

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Rocket Lab says it will live stream the flight at http://www.rocketlabusa.com minutes before the scheduled launch time.

This will be Rocket Lab’s second attempt to launch the Electron rocket from New Zealand after the first launch failed to reach orbit on May 25. The flight will carry CubeSats from Planet and Spire Global.











Loft Orbital Solutions Raises $3.2 Million

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Credit: Loft Orbital Solutions

Loft Orbital Solutions Inc., has raised $3.2 million in seed funding for its plans for satellite rideshare service that will fly payloads from different users on the same spacecraft. The round was led by Uncork Capital, which was joined by MDI Ventures, V1 VC, Mercuria Investment Japan and The Remote Sensing Tech Center of Japan.

“Our turnkey service addresses all elements of a space mission,” the company states on its website. “You provide us with a payload. We deliver it to orbit and enable you to task it and access your data.”

The San Francisco-based company was co-founded by three veterans of Spire Global: Antoine de Chassy, Alexander Greenberg and Pierre-Damien Vaujour. The company recently hired , the first South Korean in space, Soyeon Yi, to serve as its business development and partnerships manager.











Luxembourg Invests in Spire’s $70 million Series C Round

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Luxembourg, November 15, 2017 (Luxembourg PR) – The Luxembourg Government and Spire Global signed a cooperation agreement to develop, through the opening of a European HQ by the US-based company, several key activities in the Grand Duchy focused on space platform engineering, data analytics, infrastructure engineering and business development. The office in Luxembourg will serve as Spire’s full-service European headquarters. Spire is a satellite powered data company with offices in the US, Europe and Asia offering products for global ship tracking and high frequency weather data.

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ISS U.S. National Lab Payloads Prepped for Orbital ATK CRS-8 Launch

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SS John Glenn near the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL., November 2, 2017 (CASIS) – The Orbital ATK Cygnus vehicle is slated to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) no earlier than November 11, 2017 from Wallops Flight Facility.

The Cygnus spacecraft will carry ISS National Laboratory payloads to conduct research across a variety of areas aimed at improving life on Earth. In addition to the diverse research launching to the ISS National Lab, multiple payloads focused on enabling future research missions will be part of the CRS-8 manifest. Thus far in 2017, the ISS National Lab has sponsored more than 100 separate experiments that have reached the station.

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