A UK space company has revealed plans to launch its first satellite as part of SpaceX rideshare programushering in what it claims will be a “new era of space research,” where astronomical data is collected, packaged and sold “as a service.”
Similar to previous missionsfrom SpaceX Transporter 15 Next year's program will use A Falcon 9 rocket to carry third-party payloads into space, including that of the London-based company Space of blue skieswhich has revealed that its inauguration Mauve The satellite will be part of the launch in October 2025.
The satellite, which is designed to complement data provided by existing astronomical efforts such as the The famous Hubble telescopewill focus on stellar spectroscopy (the spectrum of light emitted by stars), which can convey information such as a star's composition, temperature, density, mass, distance, luminosity and more.
“Mauve is designed for long observing campaigns of hundreds of stars in our galaxy, which will help the scientific community advance key research on stars,” Blue Skies Space CEO and co-founder Marcell Tessenyi told TechCrunch.
Proposed scientific use cases include studying stellar flares, observing their frequency, energy distribution and physical properties; the effort may also cover the magnetic activity of host exoplanets to reveal the effects of UV radiation on photochemistry.
While there are other private companies collecting and monetizing space data, many of these are ground-based telescopes that observe deep space or satellites that provide observational data about Earth. Blue Skies differentiates itself by collecting data about space from space and making it accessible through a subscription-based membership model. This program already includes researchers from Boston University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, who signed up before launch to help shape the program’s design, including decisions about where the Mauve satellite should look in space and for how long.
“No private company offers astronomical data as a service; we will be the first,” said Tessenyi. “We bring new scientific satellites and data sets to the community and make them available to anyone who wants to join. This new approach really gives the scientific community greater agility and complements the high-capacity, high-demand facilities typically offered by government agencies.”
The company It has increased Around $6.5 million in total since inception, about two-thirds of which has come from equity investments from a handful of investors, including the UK seed fund. SFC Capital and The Japanese group SparxThe rest has come in the form of grants, including funds from Europe's Horizon R&D Programme.
Commercializing the cosmos
Founded in 2014, Blue Skies Space is the brainchild of a team of academics, including Tessenyi, who has a PhD in astrophysics from University College London (UCL). It has been a long road to get to this point, with the startup having gone through what Tessenyi calls the “standard mission proposal processes” with the usual space agencies. However, with the advent of so-called “mission proposal processes,” the company has managed to push the boundaries of the technology.new space“industry, characterized by private companies commercializing the cosmos, this is generating new opportunities for companies of all sizes and approaches.
“We have spent many years engaging with the global scientific community, validating our model and better understanding their scientific and data needs,” said Tessenyi. “A lot has happened within the company to enable the launch of Mauve, but also ‘new space’ has dramatically transformed the space ecosystem over the past 10 years, during which we have been able to find the right manufacturing partners and team members to implement our vision.”
Instead of building its own satellites, Blue Skies outsourced engineering work to more experienced manufacturers, including the Hungarian C3S and Dutch company isispacewith Blue Skies configuring and translating the scientific requirements into technical specifications. This includes a 13 cm telescope and a UV-visible spectrometer.
At the same time, Blue Skies is developing a second satellite called Scintillationto be built by Airbus. It will incorporate a larger telescope and a visible-infrared spectrometer, coupled to a Teledyne sensor, and will focus specifically on spectroscopic measurements of the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.
Blue Skies has not revealed how much its membership will cost, only noting that it will make this information available “soon.”
Despite its funding and efforts to launch a real satellite into space, Blue Skies remains a fairly small operation – it employs just 12 people, based in the UK and Italy.
