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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. For decades the space industry measured ground segment power in rack units and heavy copper cabling. That model was effectively retired here at the SmallSat Symposium. Instead of bigger antennas or faster rockets, discussion on the floor focuses on the convergence of Silicon Valley software agility with modern defense’s strategic requirements.
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LONDON & SAN FRANCISCO – Addressing the critical “2% problem” in Earth observation, The Compression Company has closed a $3.4 million pre-seed round led by Long Journey Ventures. The funding, […]
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. The concept of the satellite as a simple relay, serving as little more than a shiny mirror reflecting data to control rooms in Houston or Darmstadt, is extinct. At the Computer History Museum, the panel on Autonomy and AI in Space Operations delivered a eulogy for the dumb pipe era and a baptism for the intelligent edge. The consensus among the engineers and operators on stage was absolute. We aren't automating space operations because it is trendy; we are doing it because the physics of the new orbital environment leaves us no choice.
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Steißlingen, Germany – SatService GmbH, a subsidiary of Calian Group Ltd. (TSX: CGY), has been awarded a contract by the German Federal Ministry of Defence to deliver a full-service Q/V-band […]
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Rockets still make a lot of noise, but the revolution visible at the SmallSat Symposium moves silently, digitally, and at the speed of code. For decades “metal benders”—those massive aerospace conglomerates that first weld titanium and then figure out the flight computer—have defined the space industry. That era is officially obsolete.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Rockets function reliably. Satellites roll off assembly lines at scale. Yet the buzz at SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View can’t mask a sobering reality: data gets stuck on the way down.
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Dispatch from SmallSat Symposium. Attendees at the SmallSat Symposium might have envisioned a future Space Data Layer as a seamless optical-mesh network capable of near-instant data transmission. During the symposium’s Edge of Orbit session, however, participants scrutinized the mechanics available to make that ideal materialize quickly. Attendees backed off from that theoretical end-state to debate the practical complexities and significant labor required to make this revolution operational.
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In Part 2 of this series, we examine the second bottleneck facing the Orbital Data Center (ODC) : Data Gravity. We will explore why moving exabytes to and from orbit is harder than processing them, and how this specific constraint fractures the market into two mutually exclusive compute types: the high-speed "Real-Time Reduction Hub" and the massive "Batch Trainer." We will also examine other computing challenges unique to space.
Read MoreHAWTHORNE, California – In a move that significantly expands its orbital footprint, SpaceX submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday, January 30, to deploy a massive […]
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Before we dream of floating data centers, we must understand why the SmallSat is the only laboratory that matters. Welcome to The Fractal Lab: a three-part series on why orbital computing succeeds or fails first at 10 kilograms, not 10,000.
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