Aistech Space and OrbAstro Announce Service Agreement for 6U Satellite Mission Monitoring Environmental Threats with Thermal Infrared Imager

Aistech Space SL (Aistech), a high-resolution thermal imaging service provider, has signed a contract with Orbital Astronautics Ltd (OrbAstro), a satellite and in-orbit service provider, to fly its first Guardian mission scheduled for launch in Q4 2021 onboard a SpaceX dedicated rideshare mission. The OrbAstro ORB-6 satellite platform (6U-class) will host an Aistech multi-spectral imaging payload to commence commercial services addressing markets linked to environmental sustainability.

“Our mission is to work with organizations around the world to tackle critical threats to people and the environment, and build a better, more sustainable future for the next generation,” said Guillermo Valenzuela, CEO and Co-Founder of Aistech Space. “Our Guardian satellites will provide organizations with critical information for mitigating large-scale threats, such as forest fires, water waste, pollution, and illegal activity.”

Aistech is planning to deploy a constellation of 20 thermal-enabled satellites. This will be one of the first commercial constellations able to collect high-resolution thermal infrared data on demand. Information captured by Aistech’s multispectral telescope will support decision-making in the public and private sector. 

“Aistech is targeting a wide-open market and we are excited to see what they achieve. To meet surging demand from companies like Aistech Space, aspiring towards large constellations to provide their services, we at OrbAstro are scaling up our satellite production throughput,” said Dr Ash Dove-Jay, CEO of OrbAstro. “Beyond this, the orbital data relay service we are building will add value to the Aistech constellation as it grows, by greatly reducing latency of the downlink of their imaging data.”

OrbAstro is highly vertically integrated, having built all subsystems and satellite platforms from the ground up. This has allowed the company to compress costs and lead-times substantially. Their ORB-class platforms specifically designed to address the constellation markets, are state-of-the-art, with Ultrascale+ and LPDDR4 based onboard computing, electric propulsion, full attitude determination and control system with dual star-trackers, S-band transceiver, and optical communications terminal as standard.

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About Aistech

Aistech Space is a global space technology company that combines its expertise in geospatial analysis with its own constellation of small satellites and supporting infrastructure to provide solutions that help clients manage their assets and monitor environmental threats. Aistech Space leverages its strategic space capabilities (remote bidirectional communications, air traffic monitoring, and thermal infrared remote sensing) to help our customers make better, data-driven decisions.  

For more information visit https://aistechspace.com/   

About OrbAstro 

Orbital Astronautics Ltd is a United Kingdom and New Zealand based space technology company focused on providing “space as a service”, supporting companies looking to directly utilise satellites for their businesses. Orbital Astronautics is currently maturing a satellite batch production facility targeting constellation markets and is building its own satellite constellation to provide low-latency access and autonomous operations services for customers satellites.

For more information visit https://orbastro.com/