ImageSat International, a provider of space-based intelligence solutions, has introduced a new satellite platform named RUNNER, capable of real-time movement tracking from orbit—a capability the company says marks a new era for operational intelligence. According to ISI, RUNNER is the first satellite of its kind to provide dynamic, in-orbit surveillance enhanced by embedded artificial intelligence. […]The Portuguese Air Force has formally signed a contract with ICEYE for the direct acquisition of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite, marking the first time the service will fully own and control a space-based intelligence asset. The announcement, made jointly by ICEYE and the Portuguese Air Force, represents a major step in expanding Portugal’s […]Looking up at the sky just after sunset or just before sunrise will reveal a fairly staggering amount of satellites orbiting overhead, from tiny cubesats to the International Space Station. Of course these satellites are always around, and even though you’ll need specific conditions to view them with the naked eye, with the right radio antenna and only a few dollars in electronics you can see exactly which ones are flying by at any time.
[Josh] aka [Ham Radio Crash Course] is demonstrating this build on his channel and showing every step needed to get something like this working. The first part is finding the correct LoRa module, which will be the bulk of the cost of this project. Unlike those used for most Meshtastic nodes, this one needs to be built for the 433 MHz band. The software running on this module is from TinyGS, which we have featured here before, and which allows a quick and easy setup to listen in to these types of satellites. This build goes much further into detail on building the antenna, though, and also covers some other ancillary tasks like mounting it somewhere outdoors.
With all of that out of the way, though, the setup is able to track hundreds of satellites on very little hardware, as well as display information about each of them. We’d always favor a build that lets us gather data like this directly over using something like a satellite tracking app, although those do have their place. And of course, with slightly more compute and a more directed antenna there is all kinds of other data beaming down that we can listen in on as well, although that’s not always the intent.
Editor’s note: This series profiles six of the Seattle region’s “Uncommon Thinkers”: inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world. They will be recognized Dec. 11 at the GeekWire Gala. Uncommon Thinkers is presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners.
BOTHELL, Wash. — Before he became the CEO of Portal Space Systems, Jeff Thornburg worked for two of the world’s most innovative space-minded billionaires. Now he’s working on an idea those billionaires never thought to pursue: building a spacecraft powered by the heat of focused sunlight.
Thornburg and his teammates are aiming to make Bothell-based Portal the first commercial venture to capitalize on solar thermal propulsion, a technology studied decades ago by NASA and the U.S. Air Force. The concept involves sending a propellant through a heat exchanger, where the heat gathered up from sunlight causes it to expand and produce thrust, like steam whistling out of a teakettle.
The technology is more fuel-efficient than traditional chemical propulsion — and faster-acting than solar electric propulsion, which uses solar arrays to turn sunlight into electricity to power an ion drive. Solar thermal propulsion nicely fills a niche between those two methods to move a spacecraft between orbits. But neither NASA nor the Air Force followed up on the concept.
“They didn’t abandon it for technical reasons,” Thornburg said. At the time, it just didn’t make economic or strategic sense to take the concept any further.
What’s changed?
“Lower launch costs, coupled with additive manufacturing, are the major unlocks to bring the tech to life, and make it affordable and in line with commercial development,” Thornburg said.
Thornburg argues that it’s the right time for Portal’s spacecraft to fill a gap in America’s national security posture on the high frontier. “There was no imperative for rapid movement on orbit in the 1990s,” he said. “Only recently have the threats from our adversaries highlighted the weaknesses in current electric propulsion systems, in that they have so little thrust and can’t enable rapid mobility.”
Portal’s vision has attracted interest — and financial support — from investors and potential customers. Since its founding in 2021, the startup has raised more than $20 million in venture capital. In 2024, Portal won a commitment for $45 million in public-private funding from SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force. And next year, Portal is due to demonstrate its hardware for the first time in orbit.
So, how did Thornburg hit upon the idea of turning a decades-old idea into reality?
Thornburg, who’s now 52 years old, has focused on making things fly for most of his career. It all started when he was a college student in Missouri in the early 1990s, earning his aerospace engineering degree with an ROTC scholarship from the Air Force. He recalled a conversation he had with an instructor who was an old F-4 fighter pilot.
“With my nearsightedness, I was out of the game from a pilot standpoint,” Thornburg said. “But he said, ‘Thornburg, if you can’t fly the planes, go be as close to them as you can.'”
Thornburg signed up for a program that fast-tracked him into an aircraft maintenance role. He traveled around the world with KC-135 cargo planes, supporting missions that included the NATO-led air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. During his time as a flight commander and aircraft maintenance officer at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, “I had a couple of hundred enlisted people who worked hard to keep me out of trouble,” he said.
The Air Force is where he earned his master’s degree in aerospace engineering. “My adviser had a friend that worked at the Air Force Research Lab,” Thornburg recalled. “He called him and said, ‘The Air Force is about to send this guy to do something with airplanes, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to be disappointed if he can’t come out and work on rocket engines.'”
Sure enough, Thornburg was soon working on rocket propulsion development, including a project to create what’s known as a full-flow staged combustion cycle engine. “We made what people thought was not possible possible with that program,” Thornburg said.
In 2004, Thornburg left the Air Force to work on rocket propulsion systems at Exquadrum, Aerojet and NASA. Then, in 2011, he took a phone call from SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk. “We talked for about an hour, hour and a half on the phone — and he said, ‘I’ve got a project I want to talk to you about,'” Thornburg said.
That project led to the development of SpaceX’s methane-fueled Raptor rocket engine, which leveraged the technology that Thornburg helped pioneer at the Air Force. “That was a wild ride, because that felt like about 15 or 20 years of experience in a five-year time period,” he recalled.
After five years at SpaceX, Thornburg needed to wind down. He decided to do some consulting at his home base in Huntsville, Alabama, also known as Rocket City. “About six months in, I’m like, I need a real job again,” he said. “And some friends of mine introduced me to, ultimately, Paul Allen. Paul called me and said, ‘Can you come out to my Seattle office?'”
The Microsoft co-founder and software billionaire enlisted Thornburg to become the head of rocket propulsion development for Stratolaunch, Allen’s space venture. Thornburg led the effort to create a liquid rocket engine known as the PGA — which stood for “Paul G. Allen.”
Unfortunately, Allen passed away in 2018, just one month after the engine was unveiled. Under new ownership, Stratolaunch pivoted to hypersonic testing, and the PGA project fell by the wayside. Once again, Thornburg and his family hunkered down in Huntsville.
“I decided to start my first space company after Paul died,” Thornburg said. “I focused on hydrogen propulsion technology and solutions, kind of like what we were working on for Paul.”
That first company, Interstellar Technologies, started working on projects for NASA, Northrop Grumman and a couple of other customers. Then the pandemic hit. “The investors that were about to provide funding disappeared,” Thornburg said. “NASA went home, Northrop Grumman went home. And so I had to find my small team other jobs.”
Just as Thornburg was about to resign himself to riding out the pandemic in Alabama, Amazon’s recruiters called. They asked him to move to Seattle to run engineering and manufacturing for Project Kuiper, the satellite internet project that’s now known as Amazon Leo. “That’s ultimately what got us moved to Seattle,” Thornburg said.
His yearlong stint at Amazon was long enough to establish the process for building Project Kuiper’s two prototypes and the production-grade satellites that came after them. Then he took on engineering management roles at Agility Robotics and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
That’s when Portal Space Systems took shape.
To be fair, the seeds for Portal were planted back in 2016, just weeks after Thornburg left SpaceX. “Lawrence Livermore Lab had called and said, ‘We’re doing a seminar on the future of propulsion. Would you like to come be a speaker?'” he recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, what do you want me to talk about?’ They said, ‘We want you to tell us what the future of propulsion looks like.’ Oh my gosh, no pressure on that!”
As he did the research for his talk, he came across the idea of putting a nuclear reactor on a spacecraft, and using the concentrated heat from that reactor to blast a propellant through a thruster. The concept, known as nuclear thermal propulsion, seemed like a stretch — but then Thornburg had an uncommon thought.
“Can you concentrate solar energy to heat a thrust chamber and do the same thing?” Thornburg said. “You can. It’s not quite as effective as a nuclear reactor, for obvious reasons, but it’s all the same pieces. … Now I don’t have to wait on a low-cost, low-weight, space-rated nuclear reactor that doesn’t exist yet.”
Thornburg mulled over the idea for years. “I was thinking about Portal, and I was starting the beginnings of Portal in 2021, but I still had to pay the bills,” he said. For a couple of years, he worked during the day at Agility Robotics and Commonwealth Fusion — and spent nights and weekends laying the groundwork for the startup.
“When Portal could really start to stand on its own, as we started to win over the Defense Department, that’s when I made the switch with all of my time focused on what was going on in Portal,” Thornburg said. In April 2024, the startup emerged from stealth and announced it had received more than $3 million in funding from the Defense Department and the Space Force.
Portal’s flagship vehicle is called Supernova. It’s a rapid-transorbital, multi-mission vehicle that should be capable of moving itself and its payloads from one orbit to another — even from low Earth orbit to geostationary Earth orbit, more than 20,000 miles higher up. And it should be able to do that within hours or a day, rather than the weeks or months that are typically required.
The spacecraft itself will be about the size of a restaurant refrigerator. To concentrate sunlight on its heat exchanger and thruster system, Supernova will use sheets of reflective material that can unfold to a width of roughly 55 feet. Ammonia will serve as the propellant. The 3D-printed heat exchanger thruster, dubbed Flare, was successfully tested earlier this year.
Next year’s orbital demonstration will involve putting an instrument package known as Mini-Nova, which is about the size of a tissue box, on a satellite platform that’s due for launch on a SpaceX rideshare mission. The demonstration is meant to validate Supernova’s system design.
In late 2026, Portal plans to send up a free-flying spacecraft called Starburst, which will be equipped with thrusters powered by an electrothermal heating system. Starburst won’t be as powerful as Supernova, but it will provide Portal’s customers with an early option for rapid maneuverability in orbit. If next year’s test goes well, Starburst is expected to start taking on customer missions in 2027.
2027 is also the year when Supernova is scheduled to make its debut. All of the development work for Supernova and Starburst will be taking place at Portal’s 8,000-square-foot lab and 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Bothell.
Throughout Portal’s formative years, Thornburg has worked with fellow members of the “small team” he assembled at Interstellar Technologies. Both of Portal’s other co-founders — chief operating officer Ian Vorbach and engineering vice president Prashaanth Ravindran — crossed paths with Thornburg at Interstellar, and at Stratolaunch before that.
Vorbach, whose background includes startup experience as well as engineering experience, said Portal’s business model has been fine-tuned to make sure it addresses the needs of its target market. He and Thornburg identified the U.S. military’s need for tactical responsiveness in space as the top priority.
“What happens a lot in the space industry is that you have incredibly technical, talented people who have a technology that provides some very unique performance, and then they build it, and it turns out that performance isn’t needed,” Vorbach said. “There’s got to be a reason to bring that innovation to market.”
Vorbach is grateful for Thornburg’s leadership. “We work very long hours, but I think Jeff does a great job of making sure people know that they’re valued,” he said. “I appreciate that, and I think it’s why we, fortunately, are able to hire great talent from the places he’s come from, whether it’s SpaceX or Kuiper.”
Ravindran, who worked at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture before taking a founder’s role at Portal, agreed with that assessment. “It’s always amazing to have someone like Jeff out there, because he’s come up the engineering road to realize our pain points as well, and he doesn’t try to hold us to unfair standards,” he said. “That way, we are not set up for failure.”
Stan Shull, a space industry analyst at Bellevue, Wash.-based Alliance Velocity, gives Portal high marks. “In space terms, a highly maneuverable satellite is said to have high delta-V,” he told GeekWire in an email. “Portal, as a company, feels high delta-V too.”
Thornburg’s experience and expertise are big factors behind Portal’s rapid progress, Shull said. “He’s very knowledgeable about national security issues and is a straight shooter about the growing threat environment in orbit,” he said. “It’s no surprise the Space Force is among the many customers interested in what the company is up to.”
What will Portal be up to next? Looking long-term, Thornburg is intrigued by the quantum frontier. “I think there are some very interesting things happening in our understanding of quantum physics that will have propulsion applications, that won’t look like propulsion as we know it right now,” he said. “If we could fold spacetime in clever ways … there’s been plenty of writing about that.”
But when he takes a more realistic look at what could happen in his lifetime, Thornburg can’t stop thinking about nuclear propulsion. “Our Supernova spacecraft will have a version that will leverage a nuclear reactor at some point. That was always the going-in position,” he said.
The way Thornburg sees it, the nuclear option will revolutionize spacecraft — and expand humanity’s reach on the final frontier while we figure out how to fold spacetime.
“Nuclear thermal will get us further into the solar system, and this Earth-moon-Mars becomes our backyard,” he said. “But, you know, for my 12-year-old version of myself, that’s not enough.”
Amazon Leo — the satellite internet service provider formerly known as Project Kuiper — says it has started shipping its top-of-the-line terminals to select customers for testing.
Today’s announcement serves as further evidence that Amazon is closing in on providing space-based, high-speed access to the internet to customers around the world after years of preparation. Amazon Leo is still far behind SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, but the Seattle-based tech giant has lined up a wide array of partners to help get its network off the ground.
The top tier of Amazon Leo’s global broadband service, known as Leo Ultra, will offer download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second and upload speeds of up to 400 megabits per second, Amazon said today in a blog post. That’s the first time Amazon has shared details about uplink performance.
During an enterprise preview, some of Amazon’s business customers will begin testing the network using production-grade hardware and software. Amazon said the preview will give its Leo teams “an opportunity to collect more customer feedback and tailor solutions for specific industries ahead of a broader rollout.”
“Amazon Leo represents a massive opportunity for businesses operating in challenging environments,” said Chris Weber, vice president of consumer and enterprise business for Amazon Leo. “From our satellite and network design to our portfolio of high-performance phased array antennas, we’ve designed Amazon Leo to meet the needs of some of the most complex business and government customers out there, and we’re excited to provide them with the tools they need to transform their operations, no matter where they are in the world.”
The 20-by-30-inch antennas for the Leo Ultra terminals are powered by a custom silicon chip that’s been optimized for applications including videoconferencing, real-time monitoring and cloud computing. The service can connect directly to Amazon Web Services as well as other cloud and on-premise networks, allowing customers to move data securely from remote assets to private networks without touching the public internet, Amazon said.
In addition to Leo Ultra, Amazon will offer two lower tiers of service: Leo Nano, which will use a compact 7-inch antenna to provide download speeds of up to 100 Mbps; and Leo Pro, which will use a standard 11-inch antenna supporting download speeds of up to 400 Mbps.
Amazon said it’s shipping Leo Ultra and Leo Pro units to select companies for the preview program. “We’ll expand the program to more customers as we add coverage and capacity to the network,” the company said. Pricing details have not yet been disclosed.
Among the companies listed as customers and partners in today’s announcement are JetBlue, Vanu Inc., Hunt Energy Network, Connected Farms and NBN Co, which operates Australia’s National Broadband Network. Amazon Leo’s other announced partners include Verizon, Vodafone and Vodacom, L3Harris, NTT and SKY Perfect JSAT in Japan, plus DIRECTV Latin America and Sky Brasil.
Photos released today by Amazon show installations of Leo hardware at Hunt Energy facilities, where the network will provide high-speed connectivity for Hunt’s infrastructure assets.
“Hunt Energy Company operates a wide range of energy assets across the globe, and this requires exceptional connectivity to be able to operate, maintain and deliver our products,” said Hunter Hunt, CEO of Hunt Energy Holdings and board chairman of Hunt Energy’s Skyward division. “The combination of Amazon Leo bandwidth capabilities and the secure private link is exactly what we needed.”
JetBlue intends to use Amazon Leo to boost the low-cost airline’s in-flight Wi-Fi service. “Having collaborated with Amazon before, we knew Amazon Leo would share our passion for customer-first innovation,” JetBlue President Marty St. George said. “Choosing Amazon Leo reflects our commitment to staying ahead of what customers want most when traveling, such as fast, reliable performance and flexibility in our free in-flight Wi-Fi.”
Amazon Leo plans to offer high-speed satellite internet service to millions of people around the world, as well as to commercial ventures and government entities. But it still has a long way to go to follow through on that plan.
Over the past year, 153 of Amazon’s production-grade satellites have been launched into low Earth orbit (also known as LEO, an acronym that inspired the newly announced name of the service). Amazon plans to fill out its first-generation constellation with more than 3,000 additional satellites. Under the terms of its license from the Federal Communications Commission, half of those satellites are supposed to be launched by mid-2026. It seems likely that Amazon will seek an extension of that deadline.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is continuing to expand its Starlink constellation and its subscriber base. There are more than 9,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, serving the needs of more than 8 million active customers around the world. Starlink satellites are built at SpaceX’s facility in Redmond, Wash., while Amazon Leo satellites are built nearby at a production facility in Kirkland, Wash.
The United States Army has reopened its effort to identify companies capable of developing ground-based counter surveillance and reconnaissance systems designed to address space-based threats, issuing a new Sources Sought Notice under number W58SFN-25-R-0001-1. The notice was reposted on November 21 and remains open until December 5. According to the Army Contracting Command at Redstone […]BlackSky, a U.S.-based space intelligence company headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, released a detailed satellite image on November 19 showing the United Arab Emirates’ Al Fursan aerobatic team flying their newly acquired Chinese-built L-15 aircraft during the 2025 Dubai Airshow. The image, captured by one of BlackSky’s real-time Earth observation satellites, shows multiple L-15 trainers in […]
NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for Sentinel-6B, an international mission delivering critical sea level and ocean data to protect coastal infrastructure, improve weather forecasting, and support commercial activities at sea.
Launch is targeted at 12:21 a.m. EST, Monday, Nov. 17 (9:21 p.m. PST, Sunday, Nov. 16) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
Watch coverage beginning at 11:30 p.m. EST (8:30 p.m. PST) on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and more. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
The Sentinel-6B mission continues a decades-long effort to monitor global sea level and ocean conditions using precise radar measurements from space. Since the early 1990s, satellites launched by NASA and domestic and international partners have collected precise sea level data. The launch of Sentinel-6B will extend this dataset out to nearly four decades.
NASA’s mission coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
Saturday, Nov. 15
4 p.m. – NASA Prelaunch Teleconference on International Ocean Tracking Mission
Audio of the teleconference will stream on the NASA Video YouTube channel.
Media interested in participating by phone must RSVP no later than two hours prior to the start of the call at: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is online.
Sunday Nov. 16
11:30 p.m. – Launch coverage begins on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and more.
Audio-only coverage
Audio-only of the launch coverage will be carried on the NASA “V” circuits, which may be accessed by dialing 321-867-1220 or -1240. On launch day, “mission audio” countdown activities without NASA+ launch commentary will be carried at 321-867-7135.
NASA website launch coverage
Launch day coverage of the mission will be available on the agency’s website. Coverage will include links to live streaming and blog updates beginning no earlier than 11 p.m. EST, Nov. 16, as the countdown milestones occur. Streaming video and photos of the launch will be accessible on demand shortly after liftoff. Follow countdown coverage on NASA’s Sentinel-6/Jason-CS blog.
For questions about countdown coverage, contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom at: 321-867-2468.
Attend launch virtually
Members of the public can register to attend this launch virtually. NASA’s virtual guest program for this mission includes curated launch resources, notifications about related opportunities or changes, and a stamp for the NASA virtual guest passport following launch.
Watch, engage on social media
Let people know you’re watching the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by following and tagging these accounts:
X: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @NASAJPL, @NASAEarth
Facebook: NASA, NASA Kennedy, NASA JPL, NASA Earth
Instagram: @NASA, @NASAKennedy, @NASAJPL, @NASAEarth
Sentinel-6B is the second of twin satellites in the Copernicus Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission, a collaboration among NASA, ESA, EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The first satellite in the mission, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, launched in November 2020. The European Commission contributed funding support, while France’s space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales) provided technical expertise. The mission also marks the first international involvement in Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme.
For more information about these missions, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/sentinel-6b/
-end-
Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Leejay Lockhart
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-747-8310
leejay.lockhart@nasa.gov
Andrew Wang / Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-393-2433
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Apple introduced the ability to send and receive text messages via satellite last year, but now it wants to expand these features with 5G support and more.
The post Apple in Space: Exploring the iPhone’s Satellite Connectivity appeared first on TechRepublic.
Apple introduced the ability to send and receive text messages via satellite last year, but now it wants to expand these features with 5G support and more.
The post Apple in Space: Exploring the iPhone’s Satellite Connectivity appeared first on TechRepublic.
Redmond, Wash.-based Kymeta, a mobile satellite communications company, announced Manny Mora as its new president and CEO, effective immediately.
The company, founded in 2012 with backing from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, is ramping up efforts to provide services across the U.S. Department of Defense and allied militaries.
Mora spent nearly 40 years with General Dynamics Mission Systems, leading the Virginia-based company’s Space and Intelligence Systems. In this role he supported the company’s partnerships with DOD, the intelligence community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and others.
“As the defense community modernizes its command-and-control infrastructure, Kymeta is uniquely positioned to deliver mobile SATCOM solutions that perform in the most demanding environments,” said Nicole Piasecki, the executive chair of Kymeta’s board of directors, in a statement.
“Manny Mora brings the operational depth and strategic clarity to scale our impact and strengthen our role as a trusted partner to national security customers,” she added.
Kymeta is riding tailwinds from an aerospace and defense sector being reshaped by advances in software systems, autonomous platforms, satellite communications, and AI.
Kymeta was recently chosen by the U.S. Army as the multi-orbit satellite communications provider for its Next Generation Command and Control pilot. The initiative will use the company’s Osprey u8 terminal technology to provide connectivity for military operators.
“Our breakthrough technology is already transforming how defense and government customers communicate across domains,” Mora said in a statement.
In taking the role, Mora replaces Rick Bergman, a former executive vice president at semiconductor giant AMD, who took the helm in April 2024.
Kymeta makes use of an innovative type of technology called metamaterials to build antennas that can be steered by software, without moving parts. Its hybrid cellular-satellite terminals enable communications in hard-to-reach areas — an application that’s been of particular interest to defense customers.
The company also provides technology for emergency services, maritime operations, wildfire-fighting and other applications.
Kymeta raised $84 million in 2022. Total funding to date is nearly $400 million.
Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems has added another spacecraft to its product line: a rapid-maneuverability vehicle called Starburst, which takes advantage of technologies that are being developed for its more powerful Supernova satellite platform.
Starburst-1 is due to star in Portal’s first free-flying space mission with live payloads a year from now, starting with a launch on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 satellite rideshare mission. Portal says the mission will demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations, rapid retasking and rapid orbital change for national security and commercial applications.
Starburst is designed to bring maneuverability to missions that rely on constellations of small satellites, an approach known as proliferated space architecture. Such an approach is already being used for commercial constellations including SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and the concept is also gaining traction for national security applications.
Portal says Starburst and the larger Supernova platform will share many manufacturing processes and core systems, including the thrusters being developed for Supernova’s reaction control system. Like Supernova, Starburst will use heated ammonia as a propellant.
“Our strategy is to deliver what customers need now and accelerate what they’ll need next,” Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg said today in a news release. “Starburst gives operators a maneuverable bus that supports proliferated architectures in the orbit that matters to them. Supernova brings the trans-orbital reach. Flying Starburst-1 in 2026 lets us field capability quickly and advance the shared systems that raise confidence for Supernova’s 2027 debut.”
Starburst-1 is to be deployed into a sun-synchronous orbit for a one-year primary mission. Portal’s target for on-orbit maneuverability is 1 kilometer per second of total delta-v, which translates to a change in velocity amounting to more than 2,200 mph.
The ESPA-class spacecraft will carry two hosted payloads: a stereo video monitoring system provided by California-based TRL11; and a superconducting magnetic actuator provided by New Zealand-based Zenno Astronautics. Zenno plans to demonstrate the magnet technology that it has developed for satellite positioning and precision interactions between satellites.
In an email, Thornburg told GeekWire that “the Starburst-1 mission is completely funded by Portal to reduce risk and prove capability for our customers ahead of future contracted missions.” Portal plans to offer Starburst for customer missions starting in 2027.
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