Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
Craddock said, “It just seems like a good piece of the business we want to chase after, but in no way is going to stop us from going SSTO [single-stage-to-orbit] or creating a small satellite launcher.”
Jeremiah Pate is the CEO of Lunasonde. He said that his company is not a paying customer on RocketStar’s inaugural launch. It is developing plans for a constellation of satellites that will map resources under the Earth’s surface
Pate said the payload on the Cowbell launch vehicle has all the flight hardware of an operational satellite, “with the only major difference being that the power is supplied by the rocket instead of the solar panel” on the spacecraft.
He added, “The technology on this flight works similar to a conventional radar but works at a frequency over 1000 times lower by using our novel metamaterial antenna. This frequency band (VLF/ULF) is what allows us to see deep underground at high resolution.”
Lunasonde has lined up Rocket Lab to launch an operational satellite to low Earth orbit next year. According to Pate it will be capable of seeing up to 2 kilometers below land surfaces and 500 meters below water.
Pate said, “The latter satellite will be both a technology demonstration as well as providing underground data to a small number of pilot project customers. This satellite will also be the first satellite in a constellation of subsurface imaging spacecraft, eventually capable of mapping the entire planet down to 10 kilometers on a biweekly basis, providing data to industries such as water resources, mining, and geothermal. Ultimately, this allows us to tap into a completely new dataset that has previously eluded the revolution that earth observation spacecraft have achieved.”
TriSept is a launch integration and mission management specialist that counts U.S. civil, military and intelligence agencies among its customers. It plans to use Cowbell’s suborbital flight to trial software designed to protect satellites against growing cyber threats.
TriSept’s newly developed Secure Embedded Linux (TSEL) software can protect large and small satellites from known and emerging vulnerabilities. It will serve as the operating system for Lunasonde’s prototype satellite, aiming to test its performance under flight conditions.
TSEL hopes to get full flight heritage next year when it serves as the operating system for the Lunasonde satellite heading to lower Earth orbit with Rocket Lab. The TSEL software is currently in advanced lab tests and functional trials at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Rob Spicer is the TriSept CEO. He explained that TSEL currently needs to be added to satellites before they launch. However, he said that that its next generation could be uploaded to in-orbit, software-defined satellites to bolster security.
The key to TSEL’s automated mechanisms for improving cybersecurity defenses are its “zero trust” verification layers. The company said that these give operators an accurate picture of what is happening on the satellite at all times.
The vast majority of the thousands of small satellites crowding lower Earth orbit for communications, Earth imagery and other applications are ill-prepared for increasingly sophisticated security threats, according to Spicer.