Mission Integration
Shared Space Infrastructure Only Works With Clear Operating Boundaries
Viasat and Space42 are putting up to $1 billion behind Equatys, a proposed direct-to-device venture built around a simple division of labour: the venture would own common satellite and ground infrastructure, while operators keep their own spectrum and customer relationships. The initial system is planned at fewer than 200 satellites, with an architecture designed to scale to 2,800. The scale is eye-catching, but the boundary is the more important part of the proposal. Payload’s account of the Equatys plan makes clear that the two founders intend to be the system’s first clients, not to surrender their retail identities to a new constellation owner.
Modular by Design: Why Integration, Not Invention, Is Space's Next Advantage
RTX’s Blue Canyon Technologies unveiled FleXbus this week, and the product itself is less interesting than what it admits about the market. FleXbus bundles Blue Canyon’s flight-proven FleXcore guidance, navigation and control system with avionics, command and data handling, sensors, actuators, power control, batteries, payload interfaces and flight software, built to work across different spacecraft structures so customers can integrate the pieces in their own facilities, according to SpaceNews’s coverage of the launch . Blue Canyon did not build a better satellite. It built a kit of parts a customer assembles into whatever satellite they actually need, which is a different business entirely.