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LeoStella, based in Tukwila, Washington, will oversee the assembly of the first three satellites for a constellation designed to track space traffic.
LeoStella’s new project is part of a larger contract between Canada NorthStar Earth and Space on the one hand and the European Thales Alenia Space on the other.
NorthStar says its Skylark satellite constellation will be part of the world’s first commercial space-based space and environmental monitoring system. The satellites will be tasked with monitoring thousands of natural and man-made objects in low Earth orbit and sounding an alarm if a risk of collision is detected.
This kind of spatial situational awareness is expected to become more important with the launch of thousands of more satellites, including spacecraft for the SpaceX Starlink, OneWeb and Amazon Kuiper broadband data networks in the years to come.
“We are here to make the space safe to do business now and in the future,” Stewart Bain, CEO and co-founder of NorthStar, said in a press release.
The contract for the first three Skylark satellites is based on complex corporate connections: Thales Alenia Space is one of the largest satellite manufacturers in the world. LeoStella is a joint venture between Thales Alenia Space and BlackSky, a satellite and geospatial intelligence company with offices in Seattle and Virginia. And as if that wasn’t complex enough, Thales Alenia Space owns a stake in NorthStar by virtue of its partnership with Telespazio in a joint venture called Space Alliance.
Thales Alenia Space will be responsible for supplying the satellite payloads, while LeoStella will supply its LEO-100 satellite platform and oversee the assembly, integration and testing of the satellites at its Tukwila factory. Financial terms were not disclosed.
NorthStar plans to begin operating Skylark in 2022 and will add dual-mission Earth observation satellites plus space situational awareness in 2024.
LeoStella was created in 2018 to build Earth observation satellites for the BlackSky constellation. Since then, it has taken on satellite construction contracts for Cloud Constellation Corp. and Loft Orbital. The company currently has 45 employees.
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