Sky and Space Global (UK) Ltd is a British

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (l ...

planning a constellation of 200 nanosatellites in equatorial

Low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

for narrowband communications that it expects will cost $160 million or less to complete in total. Satellites will feature inter-satellite links and the capability to autonomously monitor and manage satellite health and the in-orbit communications network. The company has branches in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

History

After its incorporation in November 2015 Sky and Space Global (UK) Ltd performed a

reverse merger A reverse takeover (RTO), reverse merger, or reverse IPO is the acquisition of a public company by a private company so that the private company can bypass the lengthy and complex process of going public. Sometimes, conversely, the public compan ...

with Burleson Energy Limited enabling a backdoor listing on the

ASX Australian Securities Exchange Ltd or ASX, is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or confused within Australia as ...

and successfully completing an

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

worth $4.5 million on 31 May 2016. On 30 August 2016 Sky and Space Global signed a service contract with its first wholesale customer, Sat-Space Africa, covering the provision of bandwidth from the three demonstration satellites ("Three Diamonds") to be launched in May 2017. Sat-Space Africa forecasts revenues from using only a minor portion of bandwidth capacity provided by the three demonstration satellites of approximately $500,000 per annum, with the potential grow up to $2 million with the full equatorial constellation in operation. On 13 September 2016 Sky and Space Global announced a binding agreement with

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company i ...

to secure four dedicated launch missions on the

LauncherOne LauncherOne is a two-stage orbital launch vehicle developed and flown by Virgin Orbit that began operational flights in 2021, after being in development from 2007 to 2020. It is an air-launched rocket, designed to carry smallsat payloads of u ...

system from 2018 with each launch carrying multiple nanosatellites. Through a second public offering in November 2016, which was significantly oversubscribed, Sky and Space Global raised another $7 million. In March 2017 Sky and Space Global announced a non-binding MoU with

Globalsat Group Global sat Group is a consortium of companies providing satellite communication services worldwide with headquarters located in the United States. History Globalsat Group was founded by J. Alberto Palacios in 1999. Palacios is also the active ...

for testing and offering their satellite service in Latin America. On 7 April 2020 an announcement was published to the ASX announcing that Sky and Space Global had entered into voluntary administration the previous day. On 30th August 2021 Sky and Space Global was delisted by the Australian Stock Exchange as they could not meet the ongoing requirements of a good corporate citizen and also failed to pay their annual listing fees.

Satellites

Sky and Space Global satellites conform to the

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of miniaturized satellite based around a form factor consisting of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit, and often use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components for their electronics and structure. CubeSats ...

standard (3U per satellite) and are built at an estimated cost of around $500,000 per unit which does not include launch costs in the range of $200,000 to $250,000 per satellite. The satellites are placed in

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

at an altitude of 500–800 km. The satellites will have a design life of five to seven years. After four years the intention is to drop them back to Earth to dispose of them. Sky and Space Global intends to replace 25 percent of the constellation each year, replacing 50 satellites with new versions. Satellites will come with a propulsion system that is non-toxic and non-hazardous in terms of explosiveness. The first three demonstration satellites called Blue, Green and Red Diamond, or together referred to as the "Three Diamonds", were built by

GomSpace GomSpace is a manufacturer and operator https://gomspace.com/constellation-management-(2).aspx of nanosatellites for customers in the defence, academic, government and commercial markets. GomSpace's services include systems integration, nanosatell ...

and will be launched by the ISRO's

PSLV-XL The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is an expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed and operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It was developed to allow India to launch its Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites ...

. They will immediately provide commercial services to Sat-Space Africa and BeepTool LLC. The initial constellation of 200 satellites will be built by GomSpace as well and launched into five orbital planes, one in equatorial and four in

inclined Incline, inclined, inclining, or inclination may refer to: *Grade (slope), the tilt, steepness, or angle from horizontal of a topographic feature (hillside, meadow, etc.) or constructed element (road, railway, field, etc.) *Slope, the tilt, steepn ...

near-equatorial orbit A near-equatorial orbit is an orbit that lies close to the equatorial plane of the object orbited. Such an orbit has an inclination near 0°. On Earth, such orbits lie on the celestial equator, the great circle of the imaginary celestial sphere on ...

s. Service coverage will span from 15 degrees south latitude to 15 degrees north of the equator. Virgin Galactic has the contract to launch subsequent satellites. The company plans to provide communications services to Virgin Galactic's Cosmic Girl which will act as

launch platform A transporter erector launcher (TEL) is a missile vehicle with an integrated tractor unit that can carry, elevate to firing position and launch one or more missiles. History Such vehicles exist for both surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-s ...

for

smallsat A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites ca ...

orbital launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and syste ...

. As of December 2019, the company lowered the number of satellites planned to be launched due to funding issues, planning to launch only 8 satellites by the end of 2020.

Satellite list

Frequency bands

Sky and Space Global's constellation is planned to use spectrum in the

S band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the convention ...

and

L band The L band is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) designation for the range of frequencies in the radio spectrum from 1 to 2 gigahertz (GHz). This is at the top end of the ultra high frequency (UHF) band, at the lower en ...

for mobile communication coverage, S band for inter-satellite links and again S band and UHF for mission control. On 27 September 2016 the company announced that it has received approval from the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence to use its UHF frequencies for command and telemetry of the three demonstration satellites until the end of 2019 with the possibility to extend this timeframe.

User terminals

On 20 September 2016 Flextronics Israel Ltd signed a memorandum of understanding for the design, development and production of end user devices for Sky and Space Global's narrowband communication system. In January 2017 Ayecka Communications Systems has been contracted to build prototype hotspots, which will allow any mobile device, including tablets, to connect to the SAS satellite network using WiFi. On 20 February 2017 Sky and Space Global announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with SocialEco Ltd, a company that produces a low-cost smartphone set to enable digital financial inclusion of the 4 billion people living on less than $8 per day. The companies intend to explore the integration of an SAS app in SocialEco's smartphone and the development of a dedicated Android smartphone that will cost $20 and have the capability to directly connect to SAS's satellite network.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://skyandspace.co/ Space industry companies Aerospace companies of England British companies established in 2015