An image of the Earth taken from Planet Labs’s Dove-2 satellite in April. The company announced plans Wednesday to launch a fleet of smallsats to provide global, frequent coverage of the Earth for commercial and humanitarian purposes. (credit: Planet Labs)
A smallsat company that had been operating in stealth mode formally announced its plans today to launch dozens of spacecraft to provide imagery of the Earth for both commercial and humanitarian purposes.
Planet Labs, based in San Francisco, announced today plans to launch what it calls “the world’s largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites to image the changing planet and provide open access to that information.” The company plans to deploy a fleet of 28 satellites as secondary payloads on a launch early next year that will provide global, frequent coverage of the Earth, offering images with resolutions of 3 to 5 meters
“Our big aim, our motivation, is to use satellites to help humanity,” co-founder Will Marshall said in an interview Tuesday. “By monitoring the Earth on a regular basis, we can do a lot to help various humanitarian causes, like deforestation in the Amazon or overfishing or help people improve agricultural yields in developing countries.”
The company decided to reveal their plans after the successful flight of two demonstration satellites, Dove-1 and Dove-2, in April. Dove-1 launched as a secondary payload on the inaugural Antares launch from Virginia on April 21, while Dove-2 launched two days earlier as a secondary on a Soyuz launch of the Bion M1 spacecraft from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Launching the two demonstration satellites almost simultaneously was not their intent, Robbie Schingler, another company co-founder, said in the interview, but was the result of launch delays. Nonetheless, they were able to contact both satellites on their first communications passes. “Both of them worked out of the box, straight away, beautifully,” Marshall said.
Those satellites, as well as the 28 planned for launch next year, are “3U” CubeSats, using the form factor of three 10 x 10 x 10 cm CubeSats to create a spacecraft 30 centimeters long. “We’ve stuffed an incredible amount of capability into them,” Marshall said. The two Dove satellites launched in April used separate designs, one he called “high-risk” and the other “ultra-high-risk”; one of them was built just a few weeks before launch.
The fleet of satellites to be launched next year will operate in a relatively low orbit of only 450 kilometers. That is intentional, Schingler said, both to provide the desired resolution as well as to avoid contributing to the problem of orbital debris. “These do fall out of the sky faster than the other guys,” he said, with a lifetime of perhaps two years. They added this allows them to also rapidly iterate and launch new, more capable spacecraft on a regular basis.
Marshall, Schingler, and third co-founder Chris Boshuizen all formerly worked at NASA Ames, leaving the agency a year and a half ago to devote their time to Planet Labs. Ames has been a hotbed of smallsat work, including the three “PhoneSats” launched on the same Antares flight as Dove-1. However, Marshall said they’re using different technologies as PhoneSat, although maintaining the same philosophy of using commercial-off-the-shelf technology.
Planet Labs believes there will considerable demand for global, frequent imagery from these spacecraft from both humanitarian organizations as well as the commercial sector, particularly agriculture. Schingler said they have several contracts or other agreements in place with potential users, but declined to identify them at this time. “We are working with a select few people to get early access to information and understand the features and priorities around our product,” he said, “so once this data is available online, it immediately has use cases to the applications that we believe are going to be the most beneficial.”
Until today, Planet Labs had been operating in stealth mode as Cosmogia, attracting little attention other than a report early this year that it had raised $10 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. The company says it has raised an initial “Series A” round of $13.1 million, including DFJ as well as O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures (OATV), Capricorn Investment Management, Founders Fund Angel, Data Collective, First Round Capital, and Innovation Endeavors.
That diverse group of investors was a deliberate choice, Schingler said. “When we set out to do this, we thought about who we wanted on our team, and what kind of influence and expertise we wanted,” he said. They focused on investors in three “buckets”: technology innovation in space, open data, and a focus on doing good. Their first three investors fell into each of those three buckets: DFJ, O’Reilly, and Capricorn, founded by former eBay president Jeff Skoll.
“As Planet Labs’ first outside investor, DFJ believes in their vision to change the world for the better, and we are delighted to help them execute on their unique vision to make the big data landscape of the planet more affordable and accessible,” Steve Jurvetson, managing director of DFJ, said in a company statement.
As for what’s after the planned launch of 28 satellites next year, “we have a lot of plans beyond that,” Marshall said, but declined to offer details. “We really need to enter into the market and listen to what people really care about, what they want, and respond accordingly,” said Schingler.
Shortly before 9:30 pm EDT Wednesday evening, Planetary Resources ongoing Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign passed the $1-million mark, its original goal. That was a major milestone for the effort, since Kickstarter efforts are done on an all-or-nothing basis: campaigns only get the money pledged if the total meets or exceeds the stated goal. If they had received $999,000 in pledges, they would have received nothing; now, they’ll get however much they end up raising by the time the campaign ends on June 30.
When I looked at the status of the Kickstarter effort last week, they appeared to be on track to break the $1-million mark on June 19, based on a simplistic trending of what they had achieved to date. That turned out to eb right, but for the wrong reasons. As the chart below shows, they were actually below that trendline up until Wednesday: on Tuesday, in fact, they had a net negative total, according to Kicktraq data, presumably because of cancellations or other corrections. Then, on Wednesday, they raised nearly $95,000, pushing them over the million-dollar mark.
What happened Wednesday? They got some recognition from cartoonist Matthew Inman, of The Oatmeal. Inman had already contributed $10,000 to the Kickstarter campaign, giving him, among other things, the right to propose a name for an asteroid discovered by the Arkyd spacecraft:
Get your photo in space for $25 http://t.co/DtGZjBsvDM I think this might hit $1M by the end of the day I'll get to name an asteroid
The nearly $95,000 the campaign raised Wednesday was the third-highest single-day total, after the first two days of the effort. (They have also raised $55,906 so far Thursday, as of 1 pm EDT.) They’ll need more surges like that, though, in order to make their stretch goal of $2 million by June 30, which will fund upgrades to the Arkyd telescope to support exoplanet searches. They already have plans for a late publicity push, including webcasts with actors Rainn Wilson and Seth Green as well as space tourist and computer gaming pioneer Richard Garriott.
Earlier this month Stratolaunch Systems confirmed one of the worst-kept secrets in the space industry: its new partnership with Orbital Sciences Corporation to develop the launch vehicle for its air-launch system. Since late last year, after Stratolaunch ended its original partnership with SpaceX, Stratolaunch was rumored to be in discussions with Orbital. Earlier this year, when Stratolaunch updated its web site, it showed a redesigned booster that even appeared to have an Orbital logo on it, but there was no official confirmation from either company about a partnership.
“The agreement was finalized after a research period in which Stratolaunch charged Orbital with developing a comprehensive operational concept for its air-launch system, including the unique design of the rocket and operational processes and procedures that will need to be in place to operate the system,” the Stratolaunch release states, but offers no other information about the vehicle that Orbital will develop. The web site does indicate that the rocket, creatively called the Air Launch Vehicle (ALV), “combines proven solid and liquid propellant technology” and “utilizes a proven winged configuration first proven with Orbital’s patented Pegasus air-launch system and makes use of Orbital’s proven MACH avionics system, engineering standards and common vehicle and payload integration processes.” The video above shows what appears to be a mix of solid- and liquid-propellant engines used in the lower and upper stages, respectively, although one should be careful about reading too much into a single video.
Planetary Resources says its Arkyd-100 spacecraft can be used for exoplanet searches if it reaches a stretch goal of $2 million in its ongoing crowdfunding campaign.
Yesterday, asteroid mining company Planetary Resources announced a “stretch goal” for its ongoing million-dollar crowdfunding effort: if the company can raise at least $2 million, double its original goal, it will enhance its Arkyd-100 series spacecraft to enable searches for extrasolar planets. The additional funds would go to improved stability systems and dedicated observing time to search for exoplanets by the transit method (similar to NASA’s now-disabled Kepler spacecraft) and/or gravitational lensing, used by some groundbased telescopes. “The enhanced Arkyd will be a huge step toward important new scientific discoveries enabled by citizen scientists,” Planetary Resources president Chris Lewicki said in the statement.
One of the members of the company’s board of advisors is Sara Seager, an MIT planetary scientist who specializes in exoplanet studies. “The enhanced version of the Arkyd telescope will be an important source of data for exoplanets that can only be obtained from space, above the blurring effects of Earth’s turbulent atmosphere,” she said in the statement. The small size of Arkyd, which would limit its ability to detect transits, doesn’t appear to deter her: she’s also been involved with an MIT project called ExoPlanetSat that plans to look for transiting exoplanets around relatively bright stars using a 3U CubeSat, a spacecraft considerably smaller than an Arkyd-100.
The announcement of the stretch goal comes as some observers suggested that the company’s crowdfunding campaign had stalled out. The campaign, which started on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter on May 29, started extremely quickly, raising half a million dollars within the first two days. It has not, though, kept up that pace, and as of midday today was at just over $880,000, with 18 days left to raise the remaining $120,000.
Analysis of the progress, using data obtained from the Kickstarter tracking site Kicktraq, shows that Planetary Resources does not appear in danger of falling short of that $1-million goal (critical since Kickstarter uses an all-or-nothing funding model), but that reaching $2 million will require a significant uptick in activity. The chart below shows, in red, the funding pledged to date, while the blue line projects that through the end of the month, using the last week’s activity as an admittedly simplistic guide:
If they maintain their current trend, they’ll pass the $1-million milestone in about a week and finish with about $1.2 million. (Kicktraq’s projections put the final tally in the range of $1.1 to $1.4 million.) They have, according to the Kicktraq data, already raised more today (June 12) than yesterday, but would need a significant and sustained increase to be in reach of that $2-million stretch goal. Expect more social media (and even more conventional media) pushes by the company through the remainder of the month to make sure they reach $1 million and push for $2 million.
Illustration of a Planetary Resources Arkyd-100 spacecraft in orbit. The company is starting a crowdfunding campaign today to raise money to provide public access to one of these spacecraft. (credit: Planetary Resources, Inc.)
The company is using an event in Seattle today to reveal plans for what it calls “the world’s first crowdfunded space telescope”: access to one of its Arkyd-100 series small spacecraft in low Earth orbit specifically designed for public outreach. Backers of the crowdfunding campaign, run through the Kickstarter site, will have access to the space telescope for observations or simply a commemorative image, depending on the size of their donation.
“The idea started after our announcement last year,” said Chris Lewicki, president of Planetary Resources, in an interview Tuesday. “We were totally overwhelmed by the amount of interest we had in what we were doing.” The company, he said, got thousands of unsolicited job applications and even offers to invest, among other indications of interest in the company. “We kicked a number of ideas around with what we could do with it. More and more, as we started to talk to people in the community, this idea took shape.”
The campaign offers a range of options for participation depending on funding level. The $5,000 “Education Ambassador” and $1,750 “Education Supporter” options will allow a K-12 school access to the telescope for a series of observations. A $150 “Private Astronomer” option gives an individual an opportunity to take up to a 30-minute exposure of any celestial object (excluding the Sun), and a $99 “Help Find Killer Asteroids & Alien Galaxies!” level donates five minutes of observing time to students or citizen scientists, with a membership to The Planetary Society included.
At lower funding levels, Planetary Resources is offering what they call the “#SpaceSelfie”. The Arkyd spacecraft will be modified to include an external camera and small display. For $25, a picture of the donor’s choosing will be shown on the display, and an image of it and the spacecraft will then be taken by the external camera, with the Earth and space serving as the backdrop. This is, Lewicki said, designed to be something fun for someone interested in space. “It’s designed to connect everyone’s inherent interest in space with something that’s easy to do,” he said. “It’s something that, as we’ve been talking with people about it, everyone thinks it’s a really cool idea.”
The $1 million Planetary Resources is seeking is enough to develop the modified version of the Arkyd-100 spacecraft, as well as tools to allow people to access the telescope and educational material. At that level, Lewicki said, the spacecraft would likely be used only part time for public imaging, with Planetary Resources using the excess time for its own technology demonstration and other uses. However, if the crowdfunding campaign exceeds their goal, the additional funding would go to support additional use of the telescope by donors, including activating additional ground stations to downlink images. “It’s possible there’s enough interest in the campaign to take up most of the resources of the satellite,” he said. “And if it’s that successful, we’ll just keep building more.”
The campaign represents a major leap in space-related crowdfunding. Past efforts have raised up to about $100,000 for nanosatellites and other efforts. Earlier this year, Golden Spike tried to raise $240,000 through another crowdfunding site, Indiegogo, but ended up receiving less than $20,000.
In the case of Planetary Resources’s campaign, Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing affair: if they fall short of their $1 million goal, they receive none of the money. If that happens, Lewicki said they’ll proceed with their current plans, including development of a small prototype satellite, called Arkyd 3, that is planned for launch next year.
Lewicki, though, hopes the thrill of being able to participate in a mission—to actually control a spacecraft, for those who select those reward levels—will excite the public enough to push them over the top. “As much as I enjoy doing space exploration, I enjoy sharing it as well,” he said. One of the most incredible experiences he’s had in his career, he said, was his involvement on the Mars Exploration Rover and Phoenix Mars Lander missions, being able to tell a spacecraft what to do and to see the results. “We’ll be able to give anyone who wants it that experience. That’s the thing I’m super excited about.”
Mars One is planning a permanent human settlement on Mars within ten years, and plans to use a unique astronaut selection process open to the public. (credit: Mars One/Bryan Versteeg)
Mars One, the private venture with the audacious goal of sending humans to Mars—permanently—as early as 2023 made a splash earlier this week when it announced that more than 78,000 people had applied for its “astronaut selection program” just two weeks after starting to accept applications. The application process, revealed by the company on April 22, includes paying a registration fee that varies by nation ($38 in the US) as well as providing, as Mars One explained, “personal information about the applicant, a motivational letter, answers to a fixed questionnaire, a resume and an one minute video in which the applicant explains why he or she should be among the first humans on Mars.”
Given the requirement to provide that much information, as well as pay a fee, many were extremely impressed that Mars One had attracted that many applications so quickly. The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, noted that Mars One could have raised several million dollars based on application fees alone, and they’re not the only ones doing that fiscal math. However, those estimates, and that overall application number, require something of an asterisk.
The same day that Mars One made the announcement, I spoke with Bas Lansdorp, the co-founder and CEO of Mars One, at the Humans 2 Mars Summit, a conference in Washington organized by the space advocacy group Explore Mars. I asked him about the 78,000 figure and whether that means that all of these people have completed the application process, including paying the application fee. “I don’t know exactly what the distribution is,” he said. “People register, they pay, they start filling out their information, they have the movie to make, the movie to upload,” he said, which is then reviewed and made public if the applicant chooses to do so. “I think we have something like 700 movies online or so.” (A check of the Mars One application web site appeared to show, as of Thursday evening, about 570 videos available, based on the pagination of the videos on the site: 57 pages of 10 per page.)
So what does the 78,000 figure in the announcement represent? “It’s people who have at least done the first step,” he said. That appears to be to go to this page, which asks for only a few pieces of information: an email address, password, birth date, and country of residence. After completing the form, you’re prompted to check your email for a confirmation message; clicking on the link in that message takes you to a page asking you to pay the registration fee before proceeding with the rest of the application.
It wouldn’t be surprising, then, that there’s a sharp dropoff between those who simply complete the initial registration form and those who actually do pay (anywhere from $5 to $73, depending on the per capita GDP of the applicant’s nation). The fee serves a useful purpose by screening out those who aren’t that serious about applying, as well as providing revenue to cover the costs of the application review process. But if, as Lansdorp said, the 78,000 covers only those who completed that initial (and free) registration step, it’s a little misleading to say that 78,000 have applied, since that implies that they have all completed the registration process. Lansdorp said on Tuesday he didn’t know the breakdown of the numbers in the steps between the 78,000 who registered and the several hundred who had uploaded videos.
Lansdorp is, though, very pleased with the public response to the campagn, the first step in a long process to select the first four-person crew that Mars One plans to launch in 2022. “We were expecting half a million at the end,” he said, referring to the August 31 deadline for submitting an application. “To have already now a very good portion of that is actually quite surprising to me.”
It took a couple of days, but Virgin Galactic officials confirmed late Thursday that the company will “likely” raise ticket prices by as much as $50,000 to adjust for inflation since ticket sales started. In a statement provided by a Virgin Galactic spokesman late Thursday (after initially contacting them midday Tuesday), the company said prices would soon increase.
“Following the start of powered flight, it’s likely that we will soon see a rise in the price of Virgin Galactic space tickets, purely to adjust for inflation over the eight years or so that we have been making reservations available,” the statement read. “Longer term, our priority is still to reduce the price, and we do not anticipate going over $200k roughly per ticket in real terms.”
Reports earlier this week, including comments by Virgin Group chairman Sir Richard Branson, indicated ticket prices would be going up to $250,000 each. The company, through its spokesperson, didn’t confirm that number but said “that’s the order of magnitude.” Using the federal government’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), $200,000 in 2004 dollars works out to $246,000 in 2013 dollars, supporting that $250,000 figure. That price increase, the company said, would apply only to new customers: those who have already paid, or at least put down a deposit, would keep the current $200,000 price.
As for when the longer-term decrease in price might take place, the company said it was too early to determine when that could happen (although some reports indicated that the price cuts would start after the company flew about 1,000 people.) The decrease “will depend on the performance of a number of variables which will only really become evident as Virgin Galactic gets into commercial service and the industry emerges,” the company said in a response early Friday to a follow-up question.
As the space community celebrated Virgin Galactic’s successful powered test flight of SpaceShipTwo on Monday, the company may be using the test as an opportunity to raise its ticket price. In an interview with Los Angeles TV KABC station after Monday’s flight, Sir Richard Branson appeared to indicate a 25-percent price increase was in the works. “For a short while it will be $250,000,” he said, “and then once we’ve sent a thousand people into space, we’ll start getting the price down.”
Until now, the price for a Virgin Galactic seat has been $200,000. Did the price go up by $50,000, or did Branson—who, after all, is responsible for many more business ventures than just Virgin Galactic—simply misspeak? Branson offered a few more details to SPACE.com, indicating that the price was, in fact, going up to $250,000 in about a week to account for inflation, but plans to bring the price back down to $200,000 or less “eventually.”
Asked for confirmation Tuesday about the price increase, a Virgin Galactic spokesperson promised to look into the issue but has not responded further as of early Wednesday.
If the news is correct, the price increase would widen the gap between it and the other leading suborbital human spaceflight company, XCOR Aerospace. Space Expedition Corporation, which sells seats on flights by XCOR’s Lynx, is offering “Pioneer” flights on the Lynx Mark I, starting in the third quarter of 2014 from Mojave, for $95,000. That price increases, albeit slightly, for later flights on the Lynx Mark II: $100,000, for flights starting in 2015 from either Mojave or the Caribbean island of Curaçao. That’s 60 percent less than Virgin’s reported new price, although the two vehicles offer considerably different experiences: six people in a large cabin with the ability to float around for SpaceShipTwo, versus one person strapped into a cockpit seat for Lynx.
SpaceShipTwo during its first powered test flight on April 29, 2013. (credit: Virgin Galactic/MarsScientific.com)
The rumors were true this time. Early Monday morning, WhiteKnightTwo took off from the Mojave Air and Space Port with SpaceShipTwo slung between its twin fuselages. About 45 minutes after its 7:02 am PDT (1402 GMT) takeoff, WhiteKnightTwo released SpaceShipTwo, as it had done about two dozen times previously. This time, though, SpaceShipTwo did something it hadn’t yet done: ignite its hybrid rocket motor in flight. The motor burned for 16 seconds before turning off, after which SpaceShipTwo glided to a safe runway landing in Mojave. According to a Virgin Galactic statement issued after the flight, SpaceShipTwo reached a peak altitude of 16,800 meters (55,000 feet) and went supersonic, topping out at Mach 1.2.
“The first powered flight of Virgin Spaceship Enterprise was without any doubt, our single most important flight test to date,” Virgin Group chairman Sir Richard Branson said in a statement after the flight. “Today’s supersonic success opens the way for a rapid expansion of the spaceship’s powered flight envelope, with a very realistic goal of full space flight by the year’s end.”
“The rocket motor ignition went as planned, with the expected burn duration, good engine performance and solid vehicle handling qualities throughout,†said Virgin Galactic President and CEO George Whitesides. “The successful outcome of this test marks a pivotal point for our program. We will now embark on a handful of similar powered flight tests, and then make our first test flight to space.”
The company hasn’t disclosed a timetable for SpaceShipTwo’s future flights, beyond a “full space flight” (presumably to at least 100 kilometers altitude). After its first powered test flight on the Wright Brothers’ centennial (December 17, 2003), which was similar in performance to this one, SpaceShipOne flew three more test flights before its historic June 21, 2004, flight to 100 kilometers. That suggests there’s likely to be at least three more flights, and perhaps more, before SpaceShipTwo shoots for the Karman Line.
Below: video of the powered portion of the flight, from Virgin Galactic:
The latest parlor game in the space community has been trying to guess when Virgin Galactic will perform the first powered flight of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle. After SS2’s latest glide test, on April 12, the assumption has been that the vehicle’s next flight would be its first powered flight: the company had previously indicated that it would perform at least three glide flights of SS2 in a “powered flight” configuration, and the April 12th flight was the third such flight, all apparently successful. There were even rumors that SS2 would fly on April 22, but that date came and went without a flight.
There’s a new potential date for that flight, and it comes from an authoritative source. Speaking with the Las Vegas Sun on Tuesday, Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, Virgin Galactic’s parent, said a powered flight was imminent. “We’re hoping to break the sound barrier. That’s planned Monday,” he said. “We’ll break the sound barrier Monday and from there, we build up through the rest of the year, finally going into space near the end of the year.” That would seem to indicate that April 29th is the day of SS2’s powered flight, weather and technology permitting.
Virgin Galactic officials have not confirmed that date. “Test flight schedules have to remain flexible to be responsive to weather and a host of other factors, so [I] can’t give you a specific date,” Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides told Discovery.com. He did say that the company was “getting close” to that powered flight.
A key government official also indicated that SS2 was about to perform a powered flight. “They’re very, very close to doing their first rocket-powered test flight,” said George Nield, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, at a public meeting of the National Research Council’s Committee on Human Spaceflight in Washington on Monday. Nield wasn’t more specific about the date, other than “later on this spring.” Nield, like Branson, said Virgin would perform an incremental series of test flights, leading to a trip to space by late this year.
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