Give Me Some Space! (GMSS-1) is an industry SME driven mission, delivered by Exotopic through a new approach for IOD (in-orbit demonstration). Mission passengers have paid just £45,000 to secure their spot on this fully managed mission where their needs are the primary mission goal, allowing their payloads to be tested throughout the entire mission life. This will ensure the UK’s most promising tech is given the best possible opportunity to successfully reach market at pace, boosting UK innovation and productivity. The mission itself is being delivered by high-growth UK SMEs Exotopic, Third Planet Orbital, Commercial Space Technologies and Alden Legal. The satellite will be built and operated from the UK.
Naicker Scientific will demonstrate custom designed power electronics for Pulsar Fusion’s next generation Hall Effect Thruster, alongside novel active thermal management technology to enable very high-power space electronics.
Founder and recent winner of the Aqualunar Challenge Prize Lolan Naicker said that this mission is “A rare opportunity for an early-stage company like us to affordably demonstrate our design capabilities and products in a space environment – helping us bridge that treacherous divide between initial product development and commercialisation”.
Lodestar will fly its “TESSERACT” mission; validating a custom-built edge compute stack and sensor suite for on-orbit robotic capture. It will also serve as a testbed for on-orbit validation of Lodestar’s machine learning models.
“Our TESSERACT mission aboard GMSS will validate critical on-board realtime targeting, pose estimation, and 3D reconstruction of a target, accelerating our autonomous capture technology. This mission spotlights our UKdeveloped edgecompute stack and closeRPOD sensor suite: the eyes and brain of our capture system.” – Thomas Santini, Co-founder & CTO
Orbit Fab will be flying the valve core for RAFTI, a satellite re-fuelling port that will allow their customers to refuel their spacecraft on-orbit, extending their operating lives and kickstarting an in-space services industry.
Applied Atomics will be demonstrating enabling technologies for its fuel-agnostic, AI-defined multimode propulsion system — unlocking a new approach to in-space mobility.
The satellite will be carrying an optical payload funded by Nurjana Technologies and built by Australian outfit Infinity Avionics, to demonstrate Nurjana’s advanced algorithms and Space Domain Awareness capabilities, whilst providing Exotopic with a unique on-orbit education and training capability for mission operators and downstream users of satellite imagery. These activities will ensure the UK continues to build strong partnerships on the global stage.
