Collaboration will deliver space-based Space Situational Awareness services to protect critical satellite infrastructure
Spire Global announced a new space-as-a-service agreement with NorthStar Earth & Space (“NorthStar”), a comprehensive Earth & Space Information Services Platform, to build a constellation of satellites focused on Space-Situational Awareness (SSA) and debris monitoring. The first award within the contract is for three satellites, with pre-agreed options for NorthStar to scale the constellation to dozens of satellites as their business operational needs grow.
With this dedicated constellation, NorthStar will be able to monitor space from space, delivering timely and precise orbit determination, collision avoidance, navigation services, and proximity warnings for cyber security to the global satellite community. The mission will encompass the development of Spire’s first 12U satellites as the company continues to expand the power, volume, and edge-computing capacity available to applications deployed on Spire’s space platform.
“This is a landmark contract for the industry, demonstrating the speed, scale, and agility of Spire’s space-as-a-service model,” said Peter Platzer, CEO, Spire. “We are pleased to work with NorthStar on its mission to tackle the growing problem of space debris by deploying next-gen space situation awareness technology. Leveraging Spire’s existing infrastructure and expertise will help NorthStar accelerate the timeline to deploy and scale in space.”
Spire’s proven production and speed-to-commercial-operations track record will help NorthStar’s platform deploy and scale quickly. Once operational, NorthStar will operate the satellites using Spire’s integrated support infrastructure, collecting data to precisely track the orbits of resident space objects, and rapidly predict changes.
“Maintaining pace with the exponential increase in space activity demands immediate action from commercial innovators. Spire provides on-board processing, tasking, flexibility, and agility within an attractive service level agreement business model,” said Stewart Bain, CEO, NorthStar.
Spire and NorthStar each maintain European headquarters in Luxembourg and have a shared mission of sustainability. Reducing the threat of collision requires pinpoint tracking and prediction capabilities. NorthStar, through Spire’s dedicated constellation, will deliver timely and precise Space Traffic Management and Space Domain Awareness services that will elevate traditional SSA to the level of Space Information & Intelligence (Si2). The first three satellites for this dedicated constellation are anticipated to be launched early in 2023.
