Albedo takes Earth observation up close and personal from very low Earth orbit

Satellite imagery startup Albedo is preparing for its personal debut.

Albedo’s first satellite will be launched into orbit next spring as the company looks to disrupt the commercial Earth observation industry with its new approach and ultra-high-resolution cameras.

The satellite, called Clarity, will piggyback to very low Earth orbit (VLEO) on SpaceX’s Transporter-13 ride-share mission. That mission is currently scheduled to launch no earlier than February 2025, so Albedo should have its first satellite in orbit by this time next year.

Albedo too seven customers announced which had reserved some of Clarity’s imaging jobs, including satellite imagery broker SkyFi and German energy company Open Grid Europe.

“It’s an aggressive schedule,” said Albedo CEO Topher Haddad. “This is the first time we have publicly posted a satellite mockup. I think a lot of people probably think we’re more of a small satellite, but it’s a pretty complex robotic system with a large aperture telescope and some pretty powerful capabilities. Much of that timeline was largely driven by the custom technology we developed to fly a high-resolution system in VLEO.”

The startup is developing a first-of-its-kind spacecraft capable of capturing extremely high-resolution images while operating in very low Earth orbit. Images so sharp, the company claims, that they have traditionally been the exclusive domain of US defense. intelligence organizations.

The company says its unique – and quite large – satellite bus allows it to sell images of 10 centimeters per pixel to commercial and government customers at unprecedentedly low prices. (An image with a resolution of 10 centimeters means that each pixel covers an area on the ground the size of 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters. The largest optical imaging providers today collect images with a resolution of 30 centimeters, which has been algorithmically enhanced to 15 centimeter.)

Satellites with a resolution of 10 centimeters tend to operate at higher orbital altitudes, such as low Earth orbit, and by some estimates cost billions of dollars each to produce and launch. Low Earth orbit is generally defined as the orbital band at an altitude of about 2,000 kilometers, while VLEO is between 250 and 450 kilometers.

Albedo’s satellites will eventually be the size of refrigerators, which is much larger than many other commercial Earth observation satellites currently operating even further from Earth. It seems counterintuitive to make the satellites so heavy — you might think that to counter increased atmospheric drag it would be imperative to make the satellites as light as possible — but Haddad said in a recent interview that the company is able to counter that resistance. using ultra-efficient electric propulsion and special design decisions such as mounting the solar panels on the spacecraft instead of placing them in two wings.

“Normally you bet [the solar panels] because you can generate more force that way, but we had to minimize the cross-sectional area so that that mass and that electrical propulsion would give us the counteracting part of the drag,” Haddad explained.

As the company continues to launch more hardware into orbit, it has also appointed Kathryn Tobey as its first independent director on its now six-person board. Tobey had a 34-year career at Lockheed Martin, where she eventually became VP of the company’s $3 billion Space, Special Programs vertical. (Before founding Albedo, Haddad cut his teeth at Lockheed Martin, where he worked on some of these same systems.) That division did high-tech national security work, including classified projects—exactly the customer group Albedo targeted on the government side. wants to focus.

“She brings both superpowers, which I think are quite rare, both that deep technical understanding, not just of satellites, but of our unique niche of powerful imaging satellites, and the customer relationship in national security and understanding that mission. Well,” Haddad said.