Orbital Astronautics

Tiny satellites in large flocks

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Our first 12U-class satellite has been despatched for launch next month via an ISRO PSLV, our 4th satellite launch of the year! This will be hosting a compelling AOCS; coupling an Aliena Pte Ltd Hall thruster with Aurora Propulsion Technologies resistojets!
@SpaceNews_Inc

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

First fully commercial deep-space mission ever. @OrbAstro is building a 100kg-class spacecraft for @AstroForge for an asteroid fly-by mission, launching in Q4-23 with @Int_Machines on a @SpaceX rocket.

AstroForge: https://t.co/9uNvyEaDJS
OrbAstro: https://t.co/3N2mnzaXgb

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

We're hiring:
- Satellite Engineers
- Embedded Systems/FPGA Engineers
- Senior Electronics/RF Engineer
- Supply Chain & Procurements Manager

OrbAstro is scaling. Though we keep a low profile, we are a high-impact and high-tech space company achieving disproportionately.

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Wonderful news! @xplorespace procures @OrbAstro satellites for a series of Earth Observation and Astronomy missions, with launches commencing in late 2022. https://t.co/J6zmoWCmNV

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Great Announcement!

@DigantaraIndia has signed a service agreement with @OrbAstro to deliver the pilot satellite for their space situational awareness constellation, launching in late 2022.

Full press release here: https://t.co/zFn7St55Cn

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Automation is central at OrbAstro. It allows us to achieve disproportionately.

e.g. assembly/integration/testing for our OBC involves measuring ~17k parameters over 60hrs, mostly in vacuum, generating ~93GB of data analysed live by our AI server in our 800teraflop datacentre.

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Fantastic Announcement!

Aistech Space has selected Orbital Astronautics to deliver the pilot satellite for it's Guardian constellation, utilising an ORB-6 class satellite launching in Dec 2021 with SpaceX.

Full press release here: https://t.co/zFn7St55Cn

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

. @SpaceNews_Inc captures our journey and next steps well in this piece 🦾🛰️

[SpaceNews @SpaceNews_Inc]

Smallsat specialist OrbAstro busy building downstream dreams https://t.co/UW5igXTrat

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Awesome Announcement!

Aliena PTE Ltd has signed a service agreement with @OrbAstro to fly its smallsat propulsion system onboard a dedicated ORB-12 (24kg-class) satellite for in-orbit demonstration purposes. Launch scheduled, Sept 2022.

Press release: https://t.co/gCpGUjM4Ze

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

The Orbital Student & Orbital Start-Up competitions are back! Build & integrate a spacecraft payload, qualify it, have it flown in space, and gather data / gain flight-heritage / pilot a service.

Orbital Student: https://t.co/YmLQKMZcL8
Orbital Start-Up: https://t.co/jU5am1J1ad

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

This is Guardian-alpha, a 3U satellite entirely developed by @OrbAstro from the ground up. Launching in June with @momentusspace on a @SpaceX Falcon 9. A lot of innovation: Ultrascale+ OBC, electric propulsion, full ADCS with dual star-trackers, SDR S-band Tx/Rx, long-life EPS...

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

This comes as standard on our satellite platforms, 3U-16U: https://t.co/IlTYy964CE

Be sure to follow us. We’re now revealing what we’ve been building at OrbAstro. Satellite, subsystems, batch production capabilities, testing facilities. There is serious engineering porn coming.

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Here is a mega-controversial one...

Today we reveal our modular electrical power systems. Flight-qualified; flight-heritage in June. We went back to first principles. It took dozens of iterations to get here.

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

With this available, it makes no sense to the continue with the current convention. EPS failure, due to low cycle lifetime/environ conditions, is one of the primary reasons for early decommissioning.

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Most systems are based on TMR for fault-tolerant logic. EDAC is implemented on all memory units.

More here: https://t.co/IlTYy964CE

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Today we are talking about our “satellite on a board”.

Flight-qualified, gaining flight-heritage in June. We've compressed what is typically seven 1U-scale PCBs onto one 80x75mm board.

[Orbital Astronautics @OrbAstro]

Ultrascale+ FPGAs are known to struggle in the radiation environment. With radiation analysis using in-house tools and extensive testing, fault tolerance (SEU/SEL protection) has been implemented on both hardware/software and demonstrated successfully (400krad, 60MeV).