Virgin Creates New Company Focused on Launching Small Satellites

Virgin Galactic is well known for space tourism adventures but it had also been working on small satellites in order to claim its piece of the industry. Now Virgin Galactic is launching Virgin Orbit, a company dedicated to launching small satellites. The addition of this new company means that the Virgin Group now has three companies dedicated to small satellites under its belt.

The Virgini Galactic company is still the primary face of space tourism. According to the Verge, Currently, that company is testing out its SpaceShipTwo vehicle — a spaceplane that launches from a carrier aircraft — to make sure its ready to safely carry people to the edge of space. The Virgin Group’s other space subsidiary is The Spaceship Company, which designs and manufactures vehicles for Virgin Galactic. All three of these ventures are grouped together under a single portfolio, known as Galactic Ventures.

The Virgin Orbit will begin working on rockets that will send small satellites into orbit and the launchpad for the rockets that will send the small satellites into space. The current rocket is being designed to send small cargo into lower Earth orbit. It already has a list of satellites that are ready to launch. 

For more on this story, check out the Verge.

On Monday, SpaceX announced that it will fly 2 people to the moon next year. This will be the first mission since the Apollo missions at NASA nearly a half a century ago. CEO Elon Musk made the announcement just a week after having launched his first rocket from NASA's legendary moon pad. Before Musk sends two people to the moon, he already plans on launching two astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA in 2018. This new mission to send paid travelers to the moon adds another ambitious year for SpaceX to look ahead to.

Read more about this story at ABC.

MarketWatch releases its Small Satellite Market Report

The small satellite industry is consistently changing. There have been numerous organizations from nearly every sector taking advantage of the low cost, efficiency, and innovation that is provided by small satellites. We've covered stories in the past of small satellites providing opportunities for creating commercial opportunities as well as humanitarian efforts for solving the world's problems. The report is predicting that small satellites will have a market value that will exceed 1.42 billion in 2017.

Here is the link for further research.

Launch Providers Accomodate more Small Satellites!

Launch companies are shifting from sending large spacecraft into orbit to sending more small satellites into orbit. Experts at the Small Satellite Symposium confirmed this trend that has been sweeping the space industry. Small satellites have been adopted by many organizations ranging from the nonprofit to the commercial industries and are being deployed all over the world. One company with a focus on innovating small satellite launches is SpaceX.

Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX commercial sales vice president, detailed a new model that SpaceX is currently working on. “We are working on the model where we have multiple missions dedicated to flying secondary payloads,” Hofeller said. He further noted that getting the cost and routine schedule down, that this will be a much better opportunities for small satellites to get into orbit. SpaceX hopes to improve means of launching clusters of small satellites into low level orbit on its Falcon 9 rockets. 

Google will sell its Terra Bella Small Satellite!

Planet, an Earth-imaging firm will acquire Google's Terra Bella small satellite business. The two companies made the announcement last Friday. As part of the deal, Google also agreed to buy Earth-Imaging data from Planet. Terra Bella was founded in 2010 and it builds small satellites and constellations for Earth observation.

This acquisition and sale is a great example of the diversification of the industry that is happening. This diversification is becoming increasingly common in the small satellite industry especially when it comes to combining areas and data in order to provide better services for earth science related projects. We've seen it with humanitarian efforts from NASA and more commercial industries.

Small Satellites are used for Humanitarian Efforts!

In recent years, small satellites have been used by commercial industries to provide better quality location based services. These satellites have allowed many businesses as well as many government agencies to give us important information and reliable service for much of the technology that we use today.

While most of the work has been done to improve commercial interests, it has also been directed towards humanitarian efforts as well. NASA has been heavily pushing small satellites in this direction by emphasizing on Earth science for the year 2017. NASA intends to support the development of commercial satellites in order to use the data for addressing important issues such as disaster management, food security, weather forecasting and much more. Commercial companies are also aiming to address humanitarian issues. One company in particular, Descartes Labs, aims to use its technology to address the global food crisis.

Descartes Labs aims to address the global food crisis by utilizing a wide variety of tools that involve small satellites. Descartes Labs captures satellite images and, with the help of deep machine learning, makes accurate predictions of food production and availability that are more granular, frequent and precise than those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Predictions and forecasting of crop yields and conditions could be used to help mitigate the effects of a food shortage and ensuring that effective response systems are put into place to avoid disaster. 

Small Satellite Research Laboratory seeks Students Passionate about Space

Georgia - By 2019, the University of Georgia plans on having its very own small satellite in orbit. 28 students at UGA's small satellite research laboratory will have the chance to launch two satellites into low-earth orbit over the course of the next few years, and they're taking applications. This laboratory, which is entirely student run started in 2016 and is seeking to use the small satellites to monitor environmental conditions. The students selected for this program aren't necessarily strictly involved in aerodynamics but come from all majors and their goal is to help this program succeed and solve the problems that exist in the laboratory.

“The goal of the lab is to give UGA a continuous presence in space,” said Caleb Adams, chief manager and founder of the Small Satellite Research Laboratory. “We have our very own space agency at UGA because of this.”

For more information on this story check out the original article in The Red and Black.