science

Spaceflight Industries

Spaceflight Industries is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Spaceflight Industries rather than just read about it. In short: Spaceflight Industries, Inc. is an American private aerospace company based out of Herndon, Virginia, that specializes in geospatial intelligence services. It sold its satellite rideshare business, Spaceflight, Inc., in June 2020.

Key takeaways

Spaceflight Industries belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Spaceflight Industries to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Spaceflight Industries from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Spaceflight Industries, Inc. is an American private aerospace company based out of Herndon, Virginia, that specializes in geospatial intelligence services. It sold its satellite rideshare business, Spaceflight, Inc., in June 2020. Spaceflight Industries has two primary business services: BlackSky Global, their geospatial intelligence service, and LeoStella, a joint venture with Thales Alenia Space to manufacture small satellites.

History Spaceflight Industries was founded in 2009 as Spaceflight Services by Jason Andrews, with Curt Blake joining soon thereafter as SVP and General Counsel. Prior to founding Spaceflight, Jason Andrews worked at Kistler Aerospace and founded Andrews Space in 1999. Jason Blake has previous experience at Microsoft, Starwave, SpaceDev, and GotVoice. Spaceflight Services purchased excess capacity from commercial launch vehicles and resold it to a number of "rideshare" secondary payloads, along with providing integration and certification services. By integrating all of the secondary satellites as one discrete unit to the launch vehicle, they were able to provide a significant price discount to reach orbit compared to buying an entire launch vehicle. Blacksky Global was founded in 2013 as an independent company owned by Spaceflight specializing in imaging-as-a-service. Spaceflight Networks was started in 2014 to provide a network of ground stations for low-latency communication with cubesats and other small satellites. In 2015, Spaceflight Services, Spaceflight Systems (formerly Andrews Space), and Spaceflight Networks, were consolidated under the Spaceflight Industries brand. The same year, Blacksky announced plans for a constellation of 60 satellites that would provide low-cost satellite imagery of any location on Earth within 90 minutes. In March 2018, Spaceflight and Thales Alenia Space announced a joint venture, LeoStella, to build small satellites. LeoStella opened its production facility in February 2019. In 2020, Spaceflight Industries sold its rideshare business, Spaceflight, Inc. to Mitsui and Yamasa. BlackSky was not part of this deal. Through a business combination with Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp. (a SPAC), in September 2021 Blacksky became a separate company quoted on the NYSE (ticker: BKSY). The business combination grossed over $280 million in capital to fund Blacksky's growth plan. At the time, BlackSky Global constellation had seven satellites in low Earth orbit; the planned full complement for the constellation was at the time 30 satellites.

BlackSky

BlackSky started out as a subsidiary of Spaceflight Industries as its geospatial intelligence service, to offer on-demand images from a constellation of satellites. Their first satellite, BlackSky Pathfinder-1, was launched on 26 September 2016, and the first pictures were released publicly on 14 November 2016. In late 2018, BlackSky launched BlackSky Global-1 and BlackSky Global-2, two of the company's next generation global satellites, aboard the SSO-A mission. The company was aiming for a 60-satellite constellation, which would offer 1-meter resolution and rapid satellite revisit rates. The satellite constellation was being built by LeoStella LLC, a joint venture between Spaceflight Industries and Thales Alenia Space. BlackSky Global-3 and BlackSky Global-4 satellites were launched aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket in August 2019, and BlackSky Global-7 and BlackSky Global-8 were launched in August 2020 as part of the SXRS-1 rideshare mission. BlackSky Global-9 was launched 22 March 2021 on an Electron Photon but two more on an Electron KS on 15 May 2021 failed. Two further BlackSky satellites were launched and successfully deployed into orbit on April 2, 2022 by Rocket Lab aboard another Electron rocket. In January 2020, BlackSky received a contract from the U.S. Army to prototype satellites with 50-centimeter resolution. In September 2020, they unveiled their third generation of satellites, scheduled to launch in 2022, that would provide 50-centimeter resolution imagery. They also announced that 16 of the second generation satellites would be launched before phasing in the third-generation units.

References

External links Official website Spaceflight service BlackSky service EoPortal.org detail of payload adapter and List of payloads

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Spaceflight Industries

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Spaceflight Industries claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Spaceflight Industries before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Spaceflight Industries ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Spaceflight Industries

In research: Spaceflight Industries appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Spaceflight Industries in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Spaceflight Industries is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Aerospace companies of the United States, American companies established in 2010, Companies based in Seattle, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Spaceflight Industries outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Spaceflight Industries in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Spaceflight Industries means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Spaceflight Industries out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Spaceflight Industries in simple terms?

Why does Spaceflight Industries matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Spaceflight Industries?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Spaceflight Industries.