Traditional large satellites, as big as school buses and weighing tens of thousands of kilograms, typically cost hundreds of millions of dollars per piece and often take years to build and launch. Because of the massive investment required to build, launch and operate them, all these years, only governments and large corporations had the necessary deep pockets.
But all that is changing with the advent of small satellites. “Spacecraft that weigh anywhere from an ounce to as much as a few hundred pounds, has upended that status quo,” a White House document Harnessing the Small Satellite Revolution to Promote Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Space said in October 2016. These satellites — typically weighing anything between 1 to 10 kg — are made of off-the-shelf parts, and manufactured in just a matter of days, thus lowering the barrier to entry for commercial entities — from complexity, timing and cost perspective.
According to Euroconsult’s latest report, Prospects for the Small Satellite Market, the total market value of smallsats could reach $30.1 billion in the next ten years, up from $8.9 billion over the previous decade. Over 6,200 smallsats are expected to be launched over the next ten years, driven by the roll-out of multiple constellations accounting for more than 70% of this total, mainly for commercial operators, said the study.
Here is a list of small sat startups which have the potential to transform space industry.
1Planet
Founded: 2010
CEO & Founder: Will Marshall
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, US
Planet Labs, as it was known earlier, has single handedly shaken up the satellite industry with its small breadbox size Doves. With at least 180+ launches so far, Planet operates the largest fleet of any private company in the industry. Last year it claimed to have completed its Mission 1 – which is monitoring Earth 24×7 – and now its daily imagery gives us fresh insights about more places on the planet than anyone else. Planet designs and builds its satellites in-house, unlike other Earth imaging companies. Complete vertical integration enables it to respond quickly to customer needs and perpetually evolve its technology. Its data pipeline ensures easy web and API access to the imagery and archive. Every scene available as a tile service, composite scenes into mosaics, and build time-sliced mosaics so one can see the change over time.
Panet has so far raised a total funding of $196.1 million, the latest round being $118 million in Series C funding in 2015.
2Spire Global
Founded: 2012
CEO & Founder: Peter Platzer
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, US
Spire has so far successful deployed 48 satellites in orbit, and aims to have a 150 satellite constellation to provide a persistent view of about 97% of Earth. Its GPS radio occultation cubesats provide detailed observations of atmospheric temperature and moisture, could be used in conjunction with geostationary weather satellites like NOAA’s GOES series to further improve the accuracy and spatial resolution of global weather prediction models. Spire’s cubesats also carry Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) payloads for aircraft tracking and Automatic Identification System (AIS) payloads for maritime tracking.
Spire claims it offers data and analytics that deliver insights into the parts of the world where collecting data is notoriously difficult. Ships, planes, and weather often go untracked in remote regions, and Spire’s satellites excel in covering these areas and its products are unmatched in empowering users to take advantage of this unique data.
Spire also has significant operations in Glasgow, a reason the UK Space Agency recently awarded more than £4 million to it to demonstrate cutting-edge space technology including ‘parallel super-computing’. It has so far raised $139.6 million in funding, the latest one being a $70 million Series C funding round in November 2017.
3Spaceflight Industries
Founded: 1999
CEO & Founder: Jason Andrews
Headquarters: Seattle, Washington, US
Spaceflight Industries is a next-generation space company enabling access to space and redefining global intelligence through its two entities — Spaceflight and BlackSky. Founded as Space & Technology, Inc, the company today uses its combination of innovative satellite design, rideshare launch offerings, and geospatial intelligence services to provide insights about Earth.
Spaceflight provides launch and mission management services to small satellites companies, offering routine, cost-effective access to space. It has launched 112 satellites till date, and served across 32 countries with 10 launch vehicles in network. On the other hand, BlackSky is the company’s global intelligence platform, that integrates a diverse set of sensors and data including satellite imagery, social media, news and other data feeds. BlackSky is also building and operating their own earth-imaging satellites. The company is aiming for a 60-satellite constellation with 1-meter resolution.
4Satellogic
Founded: 2010
CEO & Founder: Emiliano Kargieman
Headquarters: Buenos Aires,
The Argentine startup was founded with the ambitious plan of providing high-resolution hyperspectral data. With NASA decommissioning its smartest satellite Hyperion in 2017, Satellogic today is the sole provider of high-resolution hyperspectral data. And it wants to give scientists this data for free. The company plans to have 300 spectroscopic satellites in orbit by the early 2020s.
Its constellation, collectively called Aleph, has already has 5 satellites in orbit, and there are plans to launch 12-18 in 2018 and another 60 in 2019. The satellites carry an imaging system operating in the visible and near infrared spectrum, generating still imagery and video of Earth at a ground resolution of up to one meter.
Combining streams of frequent high-resolution images, video and derived data products, the company provides Daily updates on infrastructure, crop health, pipeline integrity, critical infrastructure monitoring and various kinds of market intelligence forward thinking companies in competitive industries.
5Earth-i
CEO & Founder: Richard Blain
Headquarters: Guildford, Surrey, UK
Already a well-established name in the analytics business, processing and selling space pictures to a strong customer base, this British startup is now planning to launch a big constellation of Earth observation satellites. A prototype spacecraft was successfully launched earlier this year in January on ISRO’s PSLV.
The new commercial constellation – which the company announced is called Vivid-i – will be the first of its kind to provide full-color video, and the first European-owned constellation able to provide both video and still images. The multiple satellites within the Vivid-i Constellation will significantly increase the ability of companies and institutions to monitor, track and analyze activities, patterns of life and changes at any location on earth.
UK’s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) will build this constellation for Earth-i. The launches will happen in batches of five, the first set being in 2019. Footage recorded by Earth-i’s fleet of satellites will be available for analysis within minutes of being taken and will improve decision-making and response times in a wide variety of scenarios from change detection to object identification, from disaster response to infrastructure monitoring.
