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When the European thermal-imagery company constellr began working with Space Inventor on its next generation of satellites, some of the most important details of the spacecraft had yet to be finalized.
The Munich-based firm knew it wanted its HiVE, or High-precision Versatile Ecosphere, constellation to measure temperatures from space with the precision needed for agricultural applications and urban planning. But the requirements for the payload’s size, weight and power were still evolving.
That presented what can be a familiar tradeoff in the small satellite community. Work on satellite buses often begins before every detail of a payload has been finalized. If engineers lock in the spacecraft design too early, the payload may need to conform to the bus. If the payload needs new iterations, the bus may require an extensive – and expensive – redesign.
But Space Inventor, the Danish manufacturer, took a different approach. Instead of demanding the payload fit a standardized satellite bus, it adapted its BIG CAT 600 bus as constellr’s requirements evolved.
“We needed a platform built around the payload, not the other way around,” said Marius Bierdel, constellr’s co-founder and vice president of program management. “Space Inventor’s system-level approach means our thermal sensors perform exactly as designed once they’re in orbit.”
That ability to repeatedly modify the spacecraft is the centerpiece of Space Inventor’s pitch to operators who need to build payload-centric mini-constellations. Unlike megaconstellations numbering in the hundreds or thousands, mini-constellations typically range from a few satellites to a few dozen and can target specific geographies or niche capabilities.
“These are high state-of-the-art payloads that often are still in development when we start building the bus,” said Jan Smolders, the chief commercial officer at Space Inventor. As one batch is being built, he said, Space Inventor is already applying lessons learned to the design of the next.
“The standardization is in the satellite modules, not in the bus,” he added.
Mini-constellations occupy a middle ground in the satellite market.
Their smaller scale offers flexibility. Operators may want to incorporate lessons from the first satellites into later iterations. Or, as technology advances, they may want to upgrade the instruments.
Space Inventor designed its BIG CAT family of services for exactly those moments.
The BIG CAT 100, 300 and 600 platforms are sized for different spacecraft classes, but each is configurable rather than fixed. That means if a mission suddenly needs more power, improved pointing performance or a new communications capability, Space Inventor can often accommodate these changes by swapping out bus modules, rather than redesigning a spacecraft from scratch.
That philosophy of iteration is especially helpful in rapidly changing fields such as thermal imaging, space domain awareness and in-orbit servicing. It also means Space Inventor can avoid locking in a design around requirements developed years before launch.
Space Inventor pairs its modular approach with another strategy: making most of its components itself.
The company manufactures nearly all of its components – with the exception of propulsion – in house at its factory in Aalborg, Denmark, offering more control over its design and less exposure to the volatility of the supply chain.
Consider a printed circuit board.
If a new requirement calls for a modified PCB, Space Inventor can update the design, machine a revised housing, assemble the new component and test the change, all under the same roof. Such a change ordered from an outside supplier might take about six weeks. Space Inventor can make the same change in roughly one week, Smolders said.
“Because we make everything in house, we can easily add new modules to facilitate changing requirements, very fast,” he said.
This gives Space Inventor tighter quality control and reduces exposure to supply chain shortages.
Space Inventor also maintains a stock of its components, allowing it to offer next-day shipping. That reduces the risk that a small component or a supplier delay holds up the production of a spacecraft.
For mini-constellation operators, this model makes it easier to change later satellites based on what they’ve learned from earlier ones.
The same configurable approach that Space Inventor uses for commercial missions also underpins its offerings for the defense community.
Rather than only offering military customers a satellite bus, the company can pair a BIG CAT platform with a mission-specific payload to provide a turnkey system.
Space Inventor’s defense-specific Apex Predator series includes BC Lynx and BC Leopard, two turnkey surveillance solutions built on its BIG CAT platform.
Lynx is designed to detect radio-frequency emissions, geolocate their source and identify activity that may warrant further investigation. Leopard can then be tasked with capturing high-resolution optical or thermal imagery in the same area.
The approach follows a “tip-and-cue” model, with one sensor identifying a potential target and then directing another sensor to collect more detailed information.
The company has also developed a business case for detecting and investigating maritime activity in the heavily trafficked Baltic Sea, bordered by NATO members and Russia. There, Lynx satellites can identify anomalous RF emissions that could reveal dark vessels or help locate sources of GPS spoofing. It can then cue a Leopard satellite to collect additional intelligence.
This space-based approach to surveillance, Smolders argues, offers a cost-effective complement to expensive drones and stealth aircraft that can only monitor a relatively contained area at once.
“For the cost of one or two F-35s, you can actually get the intelligence to tell those planes where to go,” he said. “Affordable, proven ISR capability is ready to deploy in Europe today, with Space Inventor at the forefront of turning that capability into operational missions, but the decision-makers need to know about it.”