Founder/CEO of Albedo here. We published a detailed write-up of our first VLEO satellite mission (Clarity-1) — including imagery, what worked, what broke, and learnings we're taking forward. Happy to answer questions.
Presumably part of the ground tests consist of putting a prototype in a thermal chamber and running it a bit above max temp for a week and a bit below min temp for a week to check functionality+margins...
Wonder why this didn't pick it up? Perhaps the test wasnt long enough?
Terrific writeup. Massive congrats to the whole team for all that creative thinking in flight and all that was achieved. (Add a note about updating FPGA's in space!) Looking forward to team Bedo unlocking VLEO for everyone.
With image resolution this high, ground accuracy becomes an important factor as many people that prefer higher resolutions also want geospatially accurate images. Did you have any findings or results on this?
> Next up was maneuvering from our LEO drop-off altitude down to VLEO, where it would be safe to eject the telescope contamination cover
Why would it be unsafe to do this earlier?
> We had been tracking intermittent memory issues in our TT&C radio throughout the mission, working around them as they appeared. Our best theory is that one of these issues escalated in a way that corrupted onboard memory and is preventing reboots. We've tried several recovery approaches. So far, none have worked, and the likelihood of recovery looks low at this point.
Seems to be a pretty big problem as well, I wonder what their ideas are to diagnose the root cause here.
It all sounds a bit overoptimistic, but that may just be my interpretation.
Congrats on having a successful mission, it seems quite successful for a first try, and you clearly have some talented people on your team. But I’m going to give you my unsolicited opinion on the writing style.
The writing style sounds more like a tech bro describing some weekend conquest, and is wholly unappealing to most of the space industry (or at least the ones with decision making authority). Your CMGs were “locked in,” several times you “nailed it,” and so on.
You might have a business strategy that I’m not aware of but I’d expect that most of your market is controlled by aging men in suits, and they don’t talk like this. Most startups and tech bros aren’t spending money on space. It’s big established corporations that can fund this kind of stuff. Write like them. You can talk like a tech bro and get seed funding, but if you want to get to a sustainable business you have to talk corporate.
I would hate for your company to get passed over for lucrative opportunities because your public image seems immature. I looked at your website and you have a bunch of ex-government people on your senior advisory board. Get their opinion on your writing. It sounds silly, but you significantly lower your probability of winning contracts if people see you as a team of “bros.” People don’t want to spend millions on guys who are “locked in.” People want to spend millions on people who do professional engineering and risk reduction and clearly communicate how professional and competent they are.
I ranted way too long about your writing style. It’s pretty cool that you were able to design your own bus and most of it worked.
> most of your market is controlled by aging men in suits
that um... doesn't sound like the space market. The engineers involved won't care about whether it's big corporate speak or GPT-ish gushing about "nailing it", they'll just want to understand if its a suitable bus for their mission concept and how well it works. It's actually more candid than your average blog in that respect.
Why yet another proprietary space electronics communication bus? Do we still not have a standard, useful, open space electronics communication bus? Can someone explain to me why not?
There was a lot of this that was over my head (no pun intended) but I really enjoyed reading the whole thing. Sounds like a great job, and def a good read.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 37.9 ms ] threadhttps://albedo.com/post/clarity-1-what-worked-and-where-we-g...
How did you test attitude control + the software stack on the ground? Did you use a simulator?
LeoLabs seems to have been really helpful here. What other startups formed your 'space stack' so to speak?
I’d be interested to read a postmortem of the systems engineering approach there.
Wonder why this didn't pick it up? Perhaps the test wasnt long enough?
> Next up was maneuvering from our LEO drop-off altitude down to VLEO, where it would be safe to eject the telescope contamination cover
Why would it be unsafe to do this earlier?
> We had been tracking intermittent memory issues in our TT&C radio throughout the mission, working around them as they appeared. Our best theory is that one of these issues escalated in a way that corrupted onboard memory and is preventing reboots. We've tried several recovery approaches. So far, none have worked, and the likelihood of recovery looks low at this point.
Seems to be a pretty big problem as well, I wonder what their ideas are to diagnose the root cause here.
It all sounds a bit overoptimistic, but that may just be my interpretation.
The writing style sounds more like a tech bro describing some weekend conquest, and is wholly unappealing to most of the space industry (or at least the ones with decision making authority). Your CMGs were “locked in,” several times you “nailed it,” and so on.
You might have a business strategy that I’m not aware of but I’d expect that most of your market is controlled by aging men in suits, and they don’t talk like this. Most startups and tech bros aren’t spending money on space. It’s big established corporations that can fund this kind of stuff. Write like them. You can talk like a tech bro and get seed funding, but if you want to get to a sustainable business you have to talk corporate.
I would hate for your company to get passed over for lucrative opportunities because your public image seems immature. I looked at your website and you have a bunch of ex-government people on your senior advisory board. Get their opinion on your writing. It sounds silly, but you significantly lower your probability of winning contracts if people see you as a team of “bros.” People don’t want to spend millions on guys who are “locked in.” People want to spend millions on people who do professional engineering and risk reduction and clearly communicate how professional and competent they are.
I ranted way too long about your writing style. It’s pretty cool that you were able to design your own bus and most of it worked.
that um... doesn't sound like the space market. The engineers involved won't care about whether it's big corporate speak or GPT-ish gushing about "nailing it", they'll just want to understand if its a suitable bus for their mission concept and how well it works. It's actually more candid than your average blog in that respect.
Great write up!