Otter – Redwire wins DARPA contract for VLEO mission Leave a comment

The award supplies funding to finish manufacturing and ship the mission’s spacecraft, which makes use of Redwire’s SabreSat platform.

Particularly, Otter will construct on Redwire’s SabreSat Orbital Drone. This can be a kind of satellite tv for pc designed for endurance and cost-effectiveness in VLEO.

Redwire

The Jacksonville, Florida-based house infrastructure specialist, says VLEO represents a brand new frontier:

“By way of our work with DARPA, we’re accelerating the event of cutting-edge capabilities that may outline the way forward for this area,” stated Tom Campbell, President of Area Missions.

“With Otter and our SabreSat platform, we’re delivering higher-performance missions at decrease altitudes: bettering sensor notion and proximity to targets of curiosity, rising revisit, lowering latency, and redefining mission resilience.”

The part 2 contract will demo what the corporate calls the “world’s first air-breathing spacecraft”. That’s to say, Otter goals to allow prolonged satellite tv for pc operations at VLEO altitudes by harvesting ambient low-density air. After which ionizing and accelerating the resultant ion circulation.

The thought is to attain a nearly limitless provide of propellant.

VLEO

Redwire is positioning itself as chief in VLEO capabilities

It highlights, for instance, its present function as prime contractor for the European Area Company’s Skimsat mission.

And in addition its work for DeepSat’s deliberate VLEO constellation, dubbed Orion’s Belt. It’s going to contain AI-powered Earth remark constellation .

Picture: Redwire

See additionally: French Space Agency funds UNIVITY for VLEO-based 5G