Xplore Inc., a commercial space company providing Space as a Service® has announced it has signed a contract with Orbital Astronautics Ltd. (OrbAstro), a satellite and in-orbit service provider. Xplore will utilize OrbAstro's satellite buses for a variety of innovative missions, beginning with OrbAstro's ORB-6 platform. Xplore will fly novel Earth and astronomical observation imagers, with a first launch scheduled for late 2022.
"We are excited to have our first flight underway, and it is wonderful to work with OrbAstro — a collaborative and high-quality supplier helping reduce time and cost in our mission development," said Lisa Rich, Xplore’s Founder and Chief Operating Officer.
"Xplore is a highly innovative company that likes to move fast, which is what OrbAstro is all about. They are exactly the sort of company we love supporting," said Dr Ash Dove-Jay, CEO of OrbAstro. Further, Ash said, "Through working very closely with the Xplore team, we were able to quickly create an affordable solution for highly demanding mission parameters."
Xplore selected OrbAstro's bus because it meets the company's more complex requirement to fly multiple instruments on a single mission. One way that Xplore maximizes the value of its missions is by collecting a variety of data for its commercial, astronomical and climate research customers.
OrbAstro is highly vertical, having built satellite platforms and all subsystems from the ground up to the requirements of comprehensive satellite and constellation operations. This has allowed the company to compress costs and lead-times substantially, while providing as a baseline, a compelling offering for satellite and constellation operators. Their ORB-class platforms are state-of-the-art, with Ultrascale+ and LPDDR4 based onboard computing, electric propulsion, full ADCS with dual star-trackers, S-band transceiver, and optical communications as standard.
"OrbAstro's turnkey solution enables Xplore to run missions that prove out operations, data acquisition capabilities and customer integration functions," said Lisa Rich. "We embrace suppliers and partners capable of moving at the speed of business, as they accelerate our ability to rapidly deliver high-value data to our customers."
As a collaborative company, Xplore is actively seeking incremental offerings and unique capabilities from the innovative suppliers with lower cost, high-quality solutions that are proliferating in today's global space ecosystem.
Lisa Rich continued, "We know that great innovation is afoot, and we love meeting new suppliers who surprise us with amazing capabilities that give us an edge."