German Orbital Systems to Launch LEO Communications CubeSat

BERLIN (German Orbital Systems PR) — German Orbital Systems GmbH works on the development of small satellites’ constellation for communication in LEO orbit, the constellation will consist of 3U CubeSats. This project is implemented in partnership with iSky Technology s.r.o. (Prague, Czech Republic).

The first satellite, called “D-Star ONE”, will demonstrate the main bus components. It will future four communication modules with D-Star capability, two of which be fully dedicated to the amateur radio community. Subsequent satellites will have enhanced capabilities and communication protocols to address larger potential customer groups beyond the amateur radio community. D-Star ONE will become the first private German satellite, i.e. designed and built on own company funds.

German Orbital Systems is developing the satellite’s concept, its subsystems and software. iSky is carrying out mission analysis and environmental analysis and planning a launch program with the launch providers. Design changes will be introduced with each subsequent satellite – the result of this long-term evolutionary design approach will be the most capable communication CubeSats ever built.

“We believe that CubeSats will become a real alternative to the traditional orbital communication infrastructure”, German Orbital Systems CEO Walter Ballheimer said: “CubeSats are much cheaper and can be launched to LEO as piggyback payloads. This project will allow us to develop highly capable systems which could be used for commercial and governmental purposes”.

He also announced to begin raising an undisclosed amount from the German
venture investors to speed up the development of the constellation, as well as
to seek support from the German Aerospace Center DLR.

The launch of D-Star One is scheduled for the end of 2017 by Soyuz/Fregat LV
from Vostochny cosmodrome.

About German Orbital Systems (www.orbitalsystems.de)

German Orbital Systems is a Berlin based New Space company. It was founded
in 2014 by former scientific staff of the Technical University of Berlin and is the
only German company with focus on CubeSats on the market so far. The
product portfolio includes subsystems and turnkey satellite missions, which
consist of the ground-, space- and the launch segments. Since 2016, GOS has
been responsible for separation sequence as part of ECM Space Technologies
GmbH CubeSat dispensers, which will be launched on Soyuz-2/Fregat launch
system on the 14th of July 2017. On the maiden launch GOS hardware was
involved into the separation of 17 CubeSats from Fregat upper stage.

About iSky (www.iskytech.com)

iSky Technology is a Czech New Space start-up company established in 2016.
Currently, iSky is occupying actively a niche in missions strategic planning and
“turn-key” space market analysis for customers worldwide. iSky develops
conceptual solutions for businesses of numerous customers from the space
industry: from mission design to launch options and satellite operation on orbit.

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