Luxembourg is already well-known for space and satellite activity. As well as being the home for satellite giant SES Astra, it is also the formal domicile for SES’s arch-rival Intelsat (although Intelsat is actually run from Washington, DC). Now Spacety Luxembourg is hoping to emulate its established colleagues.
Spacety Luxembourg is a commercial space company involved in the design, manufacturing, launching, operation of satellites, and providing space flight services to its clients worldwide to flight test or demonstrate their technologies or science in space. Spacety has built and launched its first SAR [Synthetic Aperture Radar] satellite, the world’s first miniaturised C-band SAR satellite with a phased-array antenna, and plans to build, deploy, and operate a mega SAR constellation with 300+ satellites to provide near real time SAR data services to the world.
The two companies say there are common fields of interests between them. T4i is developing plasma thrusters in different sizes to accommodate the entire spectrum of smallsats, while Spacety Luxembourg is both offering flight opportunities for T4i IOD missions and looking for innovative, robust, and reliable iodine-based electric propulsion systems for their SAR constellation. In addition, this agreement formalizes the mutual interest in collaborating for future space missions and the possibility for T4i to capture the growing demand arising in the Chinese constellations market through this partnership with Spacety.
“Propulsion is an important subsystem of satellites for constellation. As more constellations are deployed for EO and telecommunications, the market for electric thrusters will expand rapidly. However, an electric thruster is a complicated system and it needs to be tested and verified in space before being used for any operational satellite mission. T4i has developed advanced propulsion technologies for small and micro satellites. Spacety has frequent flight opportunities and extensive experience of technology IOD/IOV missions. The collaboration of the two companies will produce innovative space products, which will be needed by many satellites, including Spacety’s,” said James Zheng, CEO of Spacety Luxembourg.