Startups Upending Space Industry, Accelerating Space Exploration: Part II: Proliferating Cheap Satellites

posted by Banning Garrett on October 19, 2016 - 11:11am

While a small startup (Made in Space) is disrupting the space industry and accelerating the process of space exploration by creating a new platform in space with 3D printers (see “Startups Upending Space Industry, Part I) on the International Space Station (ISS), the satellite industry is similarly being upended by numerous startups capitalizing on “democratized” technologies to build “cubesats” and other small, relatively cheap, and potentially rapidly-deployable satellites. These satellites cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to a few million each and are thus not seen as a lucrative market for companies that have designed and built large satellites costing hundreds of millions of dollars.  Yet they have the potential to disrupt the satellite business.  “A large constellation of small satellites, such as Cubesats, will always outperform a smaller constellation of large satellites,” according to Brian Lim, CEO of Hypercubes.[1] “They are more cost effective, quicker to deploy and more flexible in response to changing requirements.”  Moreover, cubesats and other small satellites are adding important new national security, commercial, and scientific capabilities in space.

Networks of potentially thousands of small satellites, especially cubesats (10 cm cubes, sometimes several - up to six units - connected to add capabilities or extend apertures) are providing cheap alternatives to many of the functions of billion-dollar satellites for communications and for extensive monitoring of the planet for science and commercial purposes.  According to a recent report, “the industry is on the cusp of a major revolution for the space sector and overall space ecosystem, as more than 3,600 smallsats are expected to be launched over the next ten years,” a 76 percent increase over the previous decade and with a potential market value of $22 billion for manufacture and launch. It was also reported that approximately 200 organizations have built smallsats in the last decade. OneWeb plans to build and deploy a network of 648 small satellites to provide global internet coverage, including rural areas currently without internet, and assured communications in a crisis when other communications systems are down.[2]  OneWeb’s high-powered board of directors includes Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, and Thomas Enders, CEO of Airbus.  Boeing and Space X have also announced plans to launch thousands of small communications satellites for Internet connectivity.

Google is also in the game with Terra Bella (formerly Skybox) and plans to orbit a fleet of micro satellites (100kg) to provide 1.1 meter video resolution and 90cm high resolution imaging in color and near-infrared of the same target several times per day. National Defense University research fellow T.X. Hammes noted that this capability will enable a buyer of the service to “literally track port, airfield, road, or rail system activity in near-real time.” Hammes adds that “the advent of micro- and cube satellites paired with commercial launch platforms will allow a middle power to develop an effective space program for surveillance, communications, navigation, and even attack of other space assets.”  While these micro-satellites are cheaper than the large satellites by an order of magnitude, they are still on the order of $50 million each.

“According to common industry usage, a ‘small satellite’ has a mass below 500kg. There are various ways of classifying small satellites. One puts ‘mini-satellites’ at between 500kg and 120kg, ‘micro-satellites’ at 120kg and 10kg, and ‘nano-satellites’ at below 10kg.  A term often heard in discussions of small satellites is CubeSat — a 10cm cube based on standard nano-satellite design. These modular units can effectively be packaged together in larger clusters, of up to six times their original size, which allows for efficient multiple launches.”[3]

While the micro satellites are an order of magnitude cheaper than the big satellites, cubesats can be cheaper yet by another two orders of magnitude - sometimes less than $100,000 - and thus they are perhaps the most disruptive trend in the satellite business.  In 2015, they constituted 48% of the 262 satellites of all sizes launched. One of the most important players in this game-changing cubesat business is Planet (formerly Planet Labs), a small startup established in 2010 by three former-NASA scientists. According to report by Planet in July 2016, over the last 3 years they have launched to low-earth orbit (LOE) 14 times from 4 different countries (U.S., Russia, Japan and India), totaling 179 satellites (of which 145 successfully reached space). 

Planet and other cubesat makers are also now sending their satellites to the ISS to be launched from the station, including some of Planet’s 3-cube “Dove” satellites.[4]  Seven-year-old startup NanoRacks has a launcher on the space station that is being used for this purpose.  Forty-nine satellites were launched from the ISS in 2015 and another 36 through early July 2016.

Even more disruptive will be actually building cubesats on the ISS and then launching them, thus eliminating the time, cost and design limitations of launching the satellites from earth.  In August 2015, Made-in-Space (MIS) and NanoRacks announced a partnership for just this purpose, which they call “Stash and Deploy”. The basic electronic and sensor guts for various satellites designs will be stored on the ISS and the design for the cubesat will be emailed to the space station, according to MIS. “Once designed, the optimized structure is created on orbit and the necessary components are integrated. The satellite will then be deployed into low Earth orbit. The entire assembly and deployment process will occur in a fraction of the time necessary to build, manifest, launch and deploy satellites from the ground.”[5]  According to MIS President Andrew Rush, “in the near future, we envision that satellites will be manufactured quickly and to the customer’s exact needs, without being overbuilt to survive launch or have to wait for the next launch.” This, he said, will constitute “a fundamental shift for satellite production.” According to CTO Jason Dunn, MIS is working with initial customers to 3D print, assemble, and deploy the first cubesats made off earth. They expect to do this activity within the next 12 months. Dunn added that “Stash and Deploy” customers could include US Government agencies that could “easily and quickly design their satellite or request a satellite be designed based on their requirements.”[6]

The “Stash and Deploy” strategy also will ease the backup for access to satellite launchers. Besides providing a faster process for putting a cubesat in orbit, the NanoRacks-MIS collaboration will also reduce the time-to-launch that is currently holding back the industry. The Financial Times noted recently that the startup Rocket Lab, which is building rockets specifically designed for low-cost launches for cubesat and micro-satellites up to 110kg to LEO, has an 18-month backlog and it has not even flown yet.[7]

Finally, one of the great advantages of the startups with inexpensive, COTS (commercial off-the-shelf technology), is that they can continually and rapidly upgrade their products, unlike the giant satellites that often have many years of lead time from initial design to final construction and certification with the lock-in of technology that may be obsolete even by the time the satellite is deployed.  Modifications after deployment, if possible, may only be done at great expense such as the “corrective lens” placed on the Hubble Space Telescope 3 years after it was launched with an improperly made lens.  Planet, on the other hand, has put in orbit satellites that are upgrades from satellites orbited only a few months earlier.  This constant upgrading process is increasingly important as the pace of technological development accelerates, increasing the potential capabilities of the cubesats and other smallsats while also reducing the cost.

Democratization of access to space by startups to place in LOE networks of communications and sensor/surveillance satellites could further erode governments’ control over space-based communications and surveillance systems.  It is possible, for example, that a network of cheap cubesats could provide real-time video downloads on most of the planet to even one meter or better resolution, especially with clustered cubesats improving resolution. “Satellogic,” a startup based in Argentina, claims it can build and deploy a system for full-planet real-time video.  Access to this and other small satellite capabilities might be accessible by almost anyone, anywhere at very low cost, perhaps even for free on her or his smartphone.  Eventually, some of cubesats, especially when networked, might rival if not fully match the capabilities of billion-dollar spy satellites.  One co-founder of a cubesat company privately asserted that his company could build very-high resolution cubesat arrays that would have sufficient sub-meter resolution to be able to read a newspaper over someone’s shoulder. Mesh-networked communications cubesats could provide communications systems bypassing government-controlled and private satellite systems now in place.  

Cubesats are a transformative technology with global implications.  They are already becoming available globally and there are new startups building small and cheap satellite launchers that are outside the control of governments.  This levels the playing field for small groups, companies, universities and others almost anywhere to build and launch their own satellites.  It is leading to creation of new businesses and scientific research efforts outside the US and even in developing countries.  It also could create access to space for violent extremist groups and international criminal networks that could obtain useful open-source data and even build and launch of their own encrypted surveillance and communications satellites.

Cubesats and nanosats create the possibility of far greater transparency on a global scale, which might hamper some intelligence operations and certainly could threaten the monopoly governments now have over some sources of information. On-demand 3D printing of cubesats on the ISS, for example, provides a quick response capability for time-critical deployment.  The potentially vast numbers of difficult to detect and rapidly replaceable satellites could enhance survivability and redundancy in a crisis or wartime when larger satellites might be at risk. 

These cubesat startups not only create a stealthy threat to the conventional space business and new capabilities at much lower cost.  They also establish a business model and platform more attuned to the current age of accelerating technological development.  This model allows for rapid and low-cost iteration of new designs and technologies and avoids long-term dependence on obsolescent technologies once they are “locked-in” to designs and production of major systems such as the shuttle and GEO satellites.  Not all these types of major systems can be abandoned, of course, but the startups are providing significant new options for replacing some old systems and doing new things that were not possible in the past – and doing both a significantly lower cost.  

[1] Interview with the author, 10 July 2016.
[2] In 2017, OneWeb plans to open a satellite manufacturing facility near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will produce up to 15 satellites per week.  
[3] Clive Cookson, Nano-Satellites Dominate Space and Spread Spies in the Sky,” Financial Times, July 11, 2016, https://next.ft.com/content/33ca3cba-3c50-11e6-8716-a4a71e8140b0.
[4] Planet reported 8 “Doves” were launched from the ISS by NanoRacks on May 17, 2016. See photos of the launch from the ISS: https://www.planet.com/pulse/good-deploy-eight-more-doves-in-orbit/#more...
[5] In interviews with the author, MIS has suggested the possibility small robots could be launched from the space station that could repair satellites or disable satellites that are no longer useful.
[6] Interview with the author July 26, 2016.
[7] For a discussion of VC funding of cubesats and other LEO space activities, see Economic Development of Low Earth Orbit, edited by Patrick Besha and Alexander MacDonald, NASA Headquarters, 2016, “Venture Capital Activity in the Low-Earth Orbit Sector,” by Josh Lerner, Ann Leamon, and Andrew Speen, https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/economic-developmen..., pp. 74-84.