The Space Industry

[00:00:00] Hywel: Hello everybody, I'd like to welcome you to The Space Industry by satsearch, where we share stories about the companies taking us into orbit. In this podcast, we delve into the opinions and expertise of the people behind the commercial space organizations of today, who could become the household names of tomorrow.
[00:00:18] Hywel: Before we get started with the episode, remember, you can find out more information about the suppliers, products, and innovations that are mentioned in this discussion on the Global Marketplace for Space at satsearch.com.
[00:00:30] Narayan: Hi, and welcome to yet another episode of the Space Industry Podcast by satsearch.
[00:00:35] Narayan: Today, I'm your host, Narayan, one of the co-founders of satsearch. Today, we are recording a podcast with Alén Space, who is an end to end business solutions provider based on CubeSat platforms in Spain, and has been working on the CubeSat standard for the last 15 years and also have been successfully acquired by GMV in the last year or so.
[00:00:56] Narayan: So today we have here, Antonio, who is one of the co founders as well as the head of the business development at Alén Space. So Antonio, welcome to the podcast and look forward to speaking to you here.
[00:01:07] Antonio: Thanks for the invitation. I'm really happy to be here.
[00:01:10] Narayan: Great. So off the bat, I would love to hear about what kind of applications do you see evolving in the CubeSat standard, that has not been done already, because I know that you guys have been involved with IOT applications and things like this. But I also read that you are now going into stuff like, cyber security tests and, intersatellite links or PNT or so on. I would love for you to discuss briefly this evolution of low data rate applications, low fidelity ones, low pointing accuracy to, these kinds of new applications that have now been emerging.
[00:01:42] Antonio: Yeah. From our point of view how we see the applications and the technologies that are evolving and are creating a new opportunities on the market is is that we have a knowledge on the for many years. On technologies related with telecommunication with the RF part of the radio part.
[00:02:02] Antonio: So our understanding is that we have all this knowledge on this part with our products, our projects, and so on, that we can enter. Now we are confident to entering a new business lines or new projects lines where we can provide this kind of technology is not the focus is not so be so related to CubeSat itself, more related on the, what do you offer at the end of how your technology could be differentiated for, from the rest and how you can provide value to the customer at the end.
[00:02:35] Antonio: So it doesn't depend on the customer, if it's a government or it's a enterprise, but at the end, if we have a, something on the that is differentiated and is really, let's say state of the art in terms of the technology. We think that there is a, an important part to an important field where we can play a little bit.
[00:02:55] Antonio: And yes, in that sense, we for the, you mentioned some of them. Yes. In that sense we work as on, for example, now we want a contract for ESA for cyber security. Okay. The project is called Cybercube is led by, by GMB Romania. And in there we, we are providing parts of the platform as well as the as the hardware for the payloads and the satellite.
[00:03:19] Antonio: At the end, it's a mission that focus on be able to provide infrastructure reconfigurable infrastructure in orbit to be able to test cyber security and try to cyber security experiments. It's like a space lab for cyber security for ESA. We put a lot of effort to. To win this contract because we understand that we have a lot of things to do on this sense since we are providing the most of the logic hardware things, OBCs payload software, refrigerator for payloads.
[00:03:52] Antonio: And so also we can look and look, we can do a lot of things on here. So that's why we think it's important to be in front of this.
[00:04:02] Narayan: So when it comes to the evolution of the CubeSat standard itself, you guys have been obviously involved for this for a very long time. How have you seen this platform standard in terms of reliability or, in terms of the performance evolved?
[00:04:15] Narayan: Because obviously what CubeSats were 15 years ago had a very high failure rate. It had, not a lot of advanced processing capabilities, not a lot of advanced pointing capabilities, not a lot of power capabilities. There's a lot of shortages that today has changed. What do you think has changed over this course of time? And where do you see all of this heading?
[00:04:34] Antonio: It's true that when we started, I remember we launched the first our first CubeSat in 2012. I remember by that time when the statistics were something like 80 percent of CubeSats in orbit doesn't live for a month or something like that was was really credible.
[00:04:50] Antonio: The amount of CubeSats that died just to launch, was dying in launch. We happily we can say that all of our CubeSats has have been working in space. All the missions have been successful and it's something that we have as a, flagship on our DNA. How this evolved is true that at the beginning yeah the power, it was not so much the let's say the technology was not so good in terms of if you compare it with today.
[00:05:23] Antonio: But at the end, the evolution of, why everything is going to satellites a little bit bigger from 1U to 3U, 6U, 12U, 16U. And now that we are seeing that some companies are moving as well as microsats something bigger like 50K or something like that. What we see at the end is the requirements on the applications, requirements on the service requirements on the customer, but not for the satellite itself.
[00:05:49] Antonio: But for the service that you want to provide what we are seeing is where you came from an academic part where when you Cube said that if make a beacon is a extremely successful, of course, the market is already discounted. That I think the market discount that the satellite should work maybe it's not always the case, but however is the reality that you have to ensure that the satellite works and then you can focus on the service that be better, have a good service.
[00:06:18] Antonio: So how we understand this movement our movement. goes for, as I said, it's focused on the technology on the application and providing something on value on the customer. So we probably will go for bigger platform in the future. But right now we are not offering it because we believe that.
[00:06:41] Antonio: The idea to go for a bigger thing is if you have something differentiated to go bigger. If you are going to do the same thing just a little bit bigger, maybe it has no much sense for, from our point of view. So that's the, that's a little bit the point. Of course there is physical restrictions that you have to face in terms of size, of course, with one UQ set, you cannot do the same things you can do with 12 view or whatever, but there are plenty of things that you can do.
[00:07:10] Antonio: You mentioned previously the the technology PNT, the the product that we are working on. And we are really proud to be on this project is a project called Leo PNT. It's a big project from ESA. It's like a, one of the. Main projects for navigation is how they call it the future of navigation.
[00:07:29] Antonio: So it's to provide the PNT signals, positioning, navigation, and timing signals for Leo. So you receive the signals and the information from Galileo, you do. Let's say so much inside the satellite, you do your, the payloads do a lot of calibrations with that signal and retransmit it to ground without you allow in the future, if this ends to be a full system, a full constellation providing LEO PNT.
[00:08:00] Antonio: You allow to, to have centimetric precision in ground. Things like, could allow things like autonomous UAVs a lot of stuff that nowadays is a little bit tricky because the Galileo is So 20, 20, 000 kilometers above. So they have some physics limitations. So now you can have like extra extra layer of precision.
[00:08:28] Antonio: And in that sense, for example, we are manufacturing two 12U CubeSats and also provided the hardware of the payload for, or part of the hardware of the payload for the, for providing this new service. Also we are providing the payload or the hardware of the payload for a microsat that is going, are going to be for satellites in our consortium for microsats built by OHV.
[00:08:53] Antonio: But at the end, if you see the technology that is on the ground is on the ground when the basis is our technology. And so it doesn't care if there's a 12 year or a 16 year or the, at the end the idea is to demonstrate the technology in this case, in our case, with the 12 year is going to provide a signal for L and S Bands for PNT and this is made with a CubeSat.
[00:09:18] Antonio: Focus on the technology, focus on the half a nice project, a nice value, added value service is where we think that the, is what the market needs. Not the market the clients wants so that's our point of view.
[00:09:34] Narayan: That's great. So I was just reading the press release on this particular project that you mentioned about the Leo PNT one. It's a quite a large project, almost 80 million euros. And you have five satellites and a whole bunch of partners. I think you listed something like 14 partners in the project or so on. So it's a, it's an exciting time because obviously you mentioned about precision. Positioning being made available to compliment Galileo system with this.
[00:10:01] Narayan: So is this project demonstration with just the five satellites? And if the project is successful, what are you looking at? Are you looking at a extended constellation that is going to go into providing services full scale, or how do you see this evolving?
[00:10:15] Antonio: How we see it is for sure is is as you mentioned, it's a big pro. It's a big project. It's a big important project from ESA because it's eight, it's true, it's 80 million, but it's two contracts of 80 million. So for ISA is 160 million project in our consortium, we are like, yes 40 companies. It's a huge consortium on them. From our side, being in the core team with companies like GMB, OHV, beyond gravity, like Indra, like big companies that are on the market for many years.
[00:10:48] Antonio: And you feel that they rely on you on. such a specific and such as tremendous work is unbelievable. You mentioned five satellites and it's truth is the there is going to be flights, five satellites in orbit on the proposal, but we have to develop one extra as a spare. that has the, one of the options of the contract is also to be in orbit.
[00:11:12] Antonio: So if ESA is working with is happy with our project, probably will be six satellites in orbit. So is the idea of how we envisage this project is the end, sometimes you see a project that maybe doesn't make you don't understand how is the, how makes sense or how is going to be something big or how it's going to be something important for the people.
[00:11:33] Antonio: Because at the end we cannot forget that we work for the people. Not for the people that make satellites, we make, we work for the people that use satellites, even if they don't know they are satellites behind the curtains. So sometimes you see a product that you cannot understand pretty well, where is the connection with the reality.
[00:11:52] Antonio: But in this case it's tremendous. It's, you can see a UAV is autonomous. This can change. lot of things in our lives. So how we envisage the opportunity or how we envisage how this could end. At the end of course, the Europe has to define if they are going to use it as a as a constellation in, if it works, because this is just a demonstration.
[00:12:14] Antonio: So if it goes to a full constellation or if it goes to a hosted payload thing, other satellites or how it goes, but for sure, it looks like they, they will want to do something on this. So for us, being in the front line, be the first that demonstrate this technology, be the first that deploy this technology.
[00:12:37] Antonio: We see a tremendous future in this technology itself and in the let's say other value services that could come as a future that we don't know yet what it could be. So we see a huge opportunity in front of ourselves. So that's the reason why I think GMV as a leader of the group, make a tremendous let's say tremendous effort to be on this project because at the end, GMV is one of the is on ground, is the biggest player in navigation for sure is.
[00:13:09] Antonio: And we also be. ready to lead up a full mission also in a space is is is amazing. It's amazing.
[00:13:16] Narayan: So let's move on to something more on the, use of CubeSats for also testing different kinds of new technologies and the implications for future missions at the end. And I guess we can talk a little bit about the CyberCube mission that you guys are involved in that obviously today there has been a lot of focus on cybersecurity.
[00:13:36] Narayan: In the space industry, and the cybercube mission, is a partnership between GMB Alén Space visa to look at testing some of the things for cyber security in the industry using the CubeSat standard. So can you walk us a little bit through on, what kind of cyber security tests can be done on CubeSats and why CubeSats may be an interesting form factor to do such tests and what would be the implications for maybe larger satellites or bigger missions based on such a IOD based on CubeSats?
[00:14:07] Antonio: Yes. Yeah, briefly the, when we saw the opportunity of the cyber CyberCube. Was when you see a project and oh, this I don't know why I didn't think about this. This is amazing. It's looks like it's is someone read your mind even if you didn't realize it's on your mind.
[00:14:26] Antonio: So it's something that. And when we see it and when I say we, I mentioned GMV and us, when we see this this project, they say, okay, for sure, we are really interested on work on this project because, GMV in this case is led by GMV Romania has a lot of knowledge in terms of historical developments with projects related with this technology.
[00:14:46] Antonio: Okay. So what we see is, okay, and it's making a CubeSat. So this is the kind of things that I mentioned before. The CubeSat itself is almost a curiosity. It's has, it's not related with the size of the satellite. The important thing is the payload, the experiments that you are doing in there.
[00:15:05] Antonio: So when we see that they ask for processing different bands at the same time, make a very verify security techniques like post quantum cryptography things of how develop a hardware security model for IP cores. All these kinds of let's say security stuff that I even didn't was aware of.
[00:15:28] Antonio: How, which amount of things is are able to, we are able to do inside some of our developments is amazing. So for us how we see these parties, this is a kind of, and we told these three, so this is the kind of the project that. Even ourselves are interested to use because it's allows you to test experiments of how the OBC work with the with the rest of the platform in terms of the onboard software and security of onboard software.
[00:15:55] Antonio: Then this is pretty now it's in a 3U, but, or it's going to be in a 3U, [00:16:00] but this is completely exportable to 6, 12, 16 microsats. It's the same it's a logical, it's a logical satellite, let's say. So the size is not, it's not not a problem. So for us Having protections for I don't know, secure boots root of trust be able to measure spectrum monitoring and be measured that you can be having some problems in the spectrum, or maybe having jamming or other kind of attacks is something that we do, we envisage that.
[00:16:34] Antonio: Is for sure is something of our key parts, our knowledge, and it's something that we can export in the future for other projects, other products, other clients other kinds of satellites. So it's for us, it's developing this technology is, it's amazing.
[00:16:49] Narayan: Great. From my perspective of knowing Helium space I would guess that I would bracket Alén Space’s missions into two parts.
[00:16:57] Narayan: One is more of these kinds of new technology developments and validating new technologies. The other is more of the constellations and the Atlantic constellations. And, you have two things, right? So with both of these different, streams that you have, the IOD IOV, as well as the operational missions and operational constellations how do you foresee Alén Space itself evolving when it comes to the standard?
[00:17:22] Narayan: So would you continue working on the CubeSat standard and, push towards, I don't know, 16, new 27, new, or do you foresee that, Missions when they get more into a deployed full phase, for example, that's, let's say there is a requirement for this particular Galileo compensation Leo constellation for P and D would that then become a bigger satellite?
[00:17:43] Narayan: And you are then looking at a bigger platform or how do you see Alén Space evolving given that you have now these two different branches?
[00:17:49] Antonio: It's amazing that you mentioned the two different branches because even ourselves internally we call about we have different companies in internal. It's not a different companies at the end.
[00:17:59] Antonio: It's just one company, but conceptually sometimes we see like that for example, you mentioned constellations. We launched the first batch of 5g constellation for satellite last August successfully, the satellites are performing pretty well. And we're really happy with that. And is for, of course is in on this part of the, be a standardized, be constellation oriented, be faster, reliable and so on, on the, on that part, and if you see at the same time the payload, the hardware of the payload, the radio.
[00:18:35] Antonio: is our development. So how we envisage the future or how we envisage how we work on the companies. We develop technology and we develop amazing state of the art technology for many projects that allow us to enter in projects or in contracts that could take advantage of this technology with that we develop.
[00:18:55] Antonio: So for example, we developed the first version of the radio that Satellite is using. The radio for Satellite is is let's call it like a tailored of one of our products. So how we envisage, we develop this product internally with our funds, with some projects that we get, and that allow us to provide a really nice product to our customer.
[00:19:20] Antonio: And then allow us to provide like the full mission because we, nobody better than us know how it works. Nobody better than us. How know how to do the best of take out of most of the payloads that has, we are building the satellite. For us, this part is like a wheel you develop the knowledge that allows you to go to more contracts that allows you to develop more technology and so on.
[00:19:44] Antonio: So probably in the future on we are not, right now we are working up to 16U. Is what we are working now, but we don't tight ourself or we don't block ourself on this size. We can see bigger satellites in our in our roadmap. We can be, we can see different kinds of satellites in our roadmap.
[00:20:05] Antonio: We can see how the technology and the market will push us and we will push it. But at the end. is we are always centric on the technology and on the added value for the customer, not just let's go bigger because everyone goes bigger and do the same, but with with a bigger structure is it for us is not.
[00:20:26] Antonio: Is not useful for the customer,
[00:20:28] Narayan: right? So finally, I would love to have your thoughts on how the market itself is evolving because obviously we talked about what is Alén Space doing and your own internal strategy and the missions that are there. And now we can talk a little bit about how you see the market evolving, because obviously we have seen this trend where a lot of the CubeSat developers.
[00:20:47] Narayan: Including the U. S. And in Europe, who are originally for working on the flip side form factor are all moving up into the higher form factors in micro satellites. This may also be because [00:21:00] of the push in the earth observation sector, because obviously, bigger cameras need bigger apertures and bigger power and all of these things which are driving up the platform sizes for these companies, right?
[00:21:11] Narayan: But obviously in the telecommunications applications, they not be the requirements may not be as stringent when it comes to the physics of the missions, especially when you're working on lower data rate and, lower connectivity kind of requirements that are out there. Where do you see this market evolving?
[00:21:29] Narayan: Do you see that, the observation will all be pushed towards microsatellites and, the telecommunications will be split between. Some of them in microsatellites and some of them in CubeSats and so on. And the final part of that that I would love for you to answer is where do you still see the CubeSat future in all of this?
[00:21:48] Antonio: Oh, okay. If many questions, the, my, my idea is if we split it it's a little bit how I how I see this, how I mentioned it before is, and [00:22:00] you may, and you say really is the driver in the earth observation is that they need bigger camera. It's not like they, they go to a bigger satellite and then they put a bigger camera.
[00:22:11] Antonio: They need a bigger camera because they need more GSD better resolution, whatever. And so they put a bigger camera. So they have to manufacture a bigger satellite in telecommunications parties. The same is if the technology that is the service, the technology that you are going to be provided needs a bigger antenna needs a bigger power needs a bigger, so the satellite is going to get in bigger and this was it's not a matter of QSAT or not.
[00:22:37] Antonio: CubeSat is the reality that it was at the beginning was one new CubeSats making IOT. Then was 2, 3, 2 CubeSats, 3, 3U 6U. Then we are seeing projects that are working on 6U, on 12U, on communications. I guess that the, when the technology or when the customer or the technology [00:23:00] arrives to a point where going to a bigger technology pays the bill.
[00:23:06] Antonio: For making a bigger satellite, but not so much bigger than you, like you faced with the traditional huge satellites, when this technology arrives to this point then the satellite is going to get bigger in all the. All the market in Earth observation, in telecommunication, navigation. It doesn't matter.
[00:23:27] Antonio: It's going to be, it's going to be this way. So probably there are going to be applications at the end. For me, it's not a terms of satellite, it's a terms of applications. There is going to be applications and sectors that will need or can be provided by one kind of satellites. Things like you mentioned, low data rates, IOT that are being provided by really small satellites like pocket cubes.
[00:23:49] Antonio: You can see high band communications that are provided by huge satelltes. So at the end, it's a matter of market, it's a matter of size. So we think, or I think better I think [00:24:00] that, yeah I don't know if there's going to be a split in terms of the CubeSat, not CubeSat, but probably there's going to be a split in terms of.
[00:24:10] Antonio: which kind of market you are addressing. And in this sense, maybe there could be layers. Maybe there is a market that could be attended by some part of the market with a microsat, some part of the market with a bigger satellite, and some part of the market with a lower satellite that could be CubeSats or not.
[00:24:25] Antonio: I don't know if I understood, I answered your question, but I think is my idea.
[00:24:31] Narayan: No, absolutely. That's how we see this market evolve as well, because at the end It just is a question of how do you sustain the infrastructure up in space? And that comes from how many users are able to use a particular service that is based on any standard at the end.
[00:24:47] Narayan: As you already mentioned in the episode, no one cares, if the signal is coming from whatever a tower or a new movie or a satellite, and if it happens to have from a satellite and it's useful, people will use it. And so long as the [00:25:00] application continues to have users. This will reflect on the infrastructure side as to what standard will be used or what size will be used.
[00:25:07] Narayan: So that's definitely how we see it. Obviously, there may be different pockets depends, depending on the revisit time, depending on, how much is a duty cycle connectivity that is required. So all of that is obviously depending on the applications, but we don't see a world obviously where only micro satellites dominate or only CubeSats dominate there.
[00:25:25] Narayan: The applications dominate, but the standards will then be reflected based on the application within the infrastructure side.
[00:25:32] Antonio: And there is a point that sometimes is,
[00:25:35] Antonio: It's not forgetting, but because it's like a huge point that is the deployment cost, no, the launch cost. So of course the launch cost, it will manage to somehow drive.
[00:25:47] Antonio: The market, because at the end, if you have, if you are having a huge cost of launching, it's going to be difficult to deploy in one technology specific. So one size specific if a big [00:26:00] part of the cost is the launch itself. Yeah totally agree at the end is application is the application that matters is the performance that matters.
[00:26:08] Antonio: And it's the market that matters. I don't know, I don't know how the market will evolve, how the market will stabilize in some size specifically, because maybe we find a standard that matches everything. But in any case I am not much worried because I know that. Wherever the future will be, I know we will be ready to provide the solution that is going to provide value for the customer.
[00:26:34] Narayan: Yeah, that's great. So thank you so much for taking the time Antonio. I think this has been a fascinating conversation. It's always great for us to learn from the people on the ground, like you, who are actually building those missions. And we are there observing the market in that sense. And we can have this conversation back and forth to know what is our perspective, what is your perspective?
[00:26:52] Narayan: And it's always, gives a holistic a proof of the market to the people listening as well. So thank you so much for taking the time.
[00:26:59] Antonio: Okay. No, thank you. [00:27:00] You Narayan for the work you do because you do an amazing job in satsearch. And this podcast is a, is an example of that is an example of how you can provide more value to the market, more value to the ecosystem, more value to the people, even though there is nothing in the space industry.
[00:27:16] Antonio: So thank you for your job.
[00:27:23] Hywel: Thank you for listening to this episode of the space industry by SatSearch. I hope you enjoyed today's story about one of the companies taking us into orbit. We'll be back soon with more in depth, behind the scenes insights from private space businesses. In the meantime, you can go to satsearch. com for more information on the space industry today, or find us on social media if you have any questions or comments.
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