Toronto based Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) announced at SmallSat 2020 this past week three new a la carte CubeSat platforms marketed towards entities interested in both demonstration and operational platforms.
The three new CubeSat platforms are Thunder (3U), Spartan (6U), and Jaeger (12U/6U). These three new platforms join four existing platforms, Nemo, Defiant, Nautilus and Dauntless. With the seven satellite platforms, SFL can accommodate the needs of those looking for nanosatellites as small as 3kg and microsatellites up to 500kg.
SFL Director Robert said in a press release that “the new line of high-performance CubeSats will allow us to offer something for everyone, from market disruption to long-term operational stability. The spectrum of SFL platform offerings will enable staged roadmaps to larger missions for some customers. Having platforms that cover the full range of capability will make transitioning and forward compatibility easier for our most demanding clients.”
With the new platforms comes a new option in the development for the new CubeSat platforms. SFL calls them Newspace (accelerated), and Microspace (standard) development options.
“The accelerated procedures are designed to move demonstration satellites quickly through the development process and into orbit for short-term proof-of-concept performance. They can also be used operationally in scenarios where rapid replenishment is planned. Microspace, or SFL’s standard development approach, which has been perfected at SFL for more than two decades, ensures the reliability of operational spacecraft built for long-duration missions in orbit.”
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Zee also stated that “once a demonstration CubeSat is launched and successfully commissioned, SFL is able to trigger mass production for rapid deployment and replenishment or leverage the success to take our client’s business model to the next step. This may involve transitioning to longer lifetime CubeSats and/or our legacy microspace platforms which can be done with relative ease.
SpaceQ spoke with a couple of representatives of SFL at SmallSat who clarified that SFL itself won’t mass produce satellites for customers, but rather will work with them on a design and consult with the customer on how they can mass produce the satellites themselves.
An example of this Kepler Communications. They are using the new Jaeger platform. SFL will help them build a group of initial satellites and as Kepler transitions to mass production, SFL will be available on a consulting basis to help them.
SFL also stated that the “CubeSats will be ideal for NewSpace programs that are intended to either disrupt commercial markets or operate from a long-term rapid replenishment strategy.”