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Category: satellites – Page 79

WASHINGTON — Small launch vehicle company Virgin Orbit says it sees opportunities not just in satellite launch but also in hypersonics as it looks to increase its revenue.

In its first financial results since going public in December after a merger with a special purpose acquisition corporation (SPAC), Virgin Orbit announced March 29 a net loss of $157.3 million for 2021 on $7.4 million in revenue. That compared to a net loss of $121.6 million on $3.8 million in revenue in 2020.

Despite the significant loss, the company emphasized in an earnings call the increase in revenue, primarily from two LauncherOne missions conducted in 2021, as well as a slight improvement in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). Virgin Orbit reported an adjusted EBITDA of –$140.4 million in 2021 versus –$157.5 million in 2020.

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TAMPA, Fla. — Indian startup Pixxel said March 28 it has raised $25 million for a hyperspectral imaging constellation that plans to deploy its first satellite this week.

Canadian early-stage investor Radical Ventures led the Series A round, bringing Pixxel’s total funding to $33 million to date.

Awais Ahmed, Pixxel’s CEO and co-founder, said proceeds will support plans to launch two satellites this year and six in early 2023 for the constellation.

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WASHINGTON — A constellation of about 40 geolocation satellites operated by Spire Global is collecting data used by the U.S. Space Force to detect GPS jamming, an issue now gaining worldwide attention due to Russia’s use of electronic warfare tactics in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.

“All of our fellow space companies … everyone is playing a vital role for humanity in this battle for freedom and democracy,” Spire CEO Peter Platzer told analysts March 9 in an earnings call.

Spire is providing GPS telemetry data to help detect jamming as part of a project run by the U.S. Space Systems Command to figure out way to automate manual data analysis techniques and produce more timely intelligence for military operations.

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WASHINGTON — If you can’t beat them, join them. That is the thinking behind a new managed network service offered by satellite operator Intelsat that integrates geostationary satellites, SpaceX’s Starlink low Earth orbit constellation and cellular broadband.

“A lot of our customers would like to use Starlink and many have been using it,” Don Claussen, Intelsat’s vice president of business development, told SpaceNews at last week’s Satellite 2022 conference.

Satellite communications companies “spend so much time fighting each other over what orbits are better, what band is better,” he said. “If we’re really listening to our customers, what they are saying is ‘we kind of need all of you.’”.

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ULA remains confident that its Vulcan Centaur rocket will make its first launch this year while Blue Origin is pushing back the first flight of New Glenn.

WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance remains confident that its Vulcan Centaur rocket will make its first launch this year while Blue Origin is pushing back the first flight of its New Glenn vehicle.

During a panel at the Satellite 2022 conference March 22, Tory Bruno, chief executive of ULA, said that he expected the first launch of the Vulcan “later this year,” but did not offer a more specific schedule.

That schedule is driven by the completion of testing of the BE-4 engine that powers the first stage of Vulcan and delivery of the first flight units from Blue Origin. “The engine is in great shape,” Bruno said. “It is performing better than I anticipated.”

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A Chinese company has announced the construction of a new supersonic jet that is designed to travel from China to New York in just 60 minutes.

The company behind the project is Space Transportation, and according to its announcement, the company will be building a “rocket with wings” that will be much cheaper than the rockets used to take satellites into low-Earth orbit, while also being much faster than a commercial plane. Space Transportation has posted a demonstration video to its website, and the showcases four individuals getting aboard the jet that then orientates vertically and then launched.

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Atomic clocks are the best sensors mankind has ever built. Today, they can be found in national standards institutes or satellites of navigation systems. Scientists all over the world are working to further optimize the precision of these clocks. Now, a research group led by Peter Zoller, a theorist from Innsbruck, Austria, has developed a new concept that can be used to operate sensors with even greater precision irrespective of which technical platform is used to make the sensor. “We answer the question of how precise a sensor can be with existing control capabilities, and give a recipe for how this can be achieved,” explain Denis Vasilyev and Raphael Kaubrügger from Peter Zoller’s group at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Innsbruck.

For this purpose, the physicists use a method from processing: Variational quantum algorithms describe a circuit of quantum gates that depends on free parameters. Through optimization routines, the sensor autonomously finds the best settings for an optimal result. “We applied this technique to a problem from metrology—the science of measurement,” Vasilyev and Kaubrügger explain. “This is exciting because historically advances in were motivated by metrology, and in turn emerged from that. So, we’ve come full circle here,” Peter Zoller says. With the new approach, scientists can optimize quantum sensors to the point where they achieve the best possible precision technically permissible.

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