A British space startup has revealed plans to launch its first satellite as part of SpaceX's ride-along program, which the company claims will usher in a “new era of space research” in which astronomy data will be collected, packaged and sold “as a service.”
Like previous missions, SpaceX's Transporter 15 program next year will use a Falcon 9 rocket to ferry third-party payloads into space, including one from London-based Blue Skies Space, which has revealed it will carry its first Moab satellites on an October 2025 launch.
The satellite is designed to complement data provided by existing astronomy efforts such as the famous Hubble Telescope, and will focus on stellar spectroscopy – the spectrum of light emitted by stars, which can tell us information such as their composition, temperature, density, mass, distance and brightness.
“Mauve is designed to make long-term observations of hundreds of stars in our galaxy, helping the scientific community advance important research into the stars,” Marcell Tessenyi, CEO and co-founder of Blue Skies Space, told TechCrunch.
Proposed scientific use cases include studying stellar flares – investigating their frequency, energy distribution and physical properties – and the mission could also involve investigating the magnetic activity of exoplanet hosts to determine how ultraviolet radiation affects their photochemistry.
Model of Mauve in space Image courtesy of Blue Skies Space
Other private companies are collecting and monetizing space data, but most of them use ground-based telescopes to observe deep space or satellites to provide Earth observations. Blue Skies differentiates itself by collecting data about space from space and making it easily accessible through a subscription-based membership model. Researchers from Boston University and the National Astronomical Observatory are already involved in the program, helping define the program design before launch and helping decide where in space the Mauve satellite will observe, for how long, and more.
“No private company is offering astronomy data as a service, and we're leading the way,” Tesseny said. “We're making our new scientific satellites and data sets available to the community and to anyone who wants to participate. This new approach brings greater agility to the science community and complements the larger, more capable, and more sought-after facilities typically provided by government agencies.”
The company has raised about $6.5 million in total since its inception, about two-thirds of which has come from equity investments from a small number of investors, including U.K. seed fund SFC Capital and Japan's Sparx Group, while the rest has come from grants, including funding from Europe's Horizon R&D program.
Commercializing Space
Founded in 2014, Blue Skies Space is the work of a team of academics including Tesseny, who holds a PhD in astrophysics from University College London (UCL). It's been a long journey to get to this stage, with the startup going through what Tesseny calls a “standard mission proposal process” with the usual space agencies. But the emergence of the so-called “new space” industry, in which private companies are commercializing space, is creating new opportunities for companies of all sizes and sectors.
“We have been engaging with the global scientific community for many years to validate our models and better understand their science and data needs,” said Tesseny. “A lot has happened within the business to enable the launch of Mauve, but also over the last decade the 'new space' has dramatically changed the space ecosystem, during which time we have been able to find the right manufacturing partners and team members to bring our vision to life.”
Blue Skies Space CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Marcell Tessenyi Image courtesy of Blue Skies Space
Rather than build the satellites in-house, Blue Skies outsourced the engineering work to more experienced manufacturers, such as Hungary's C3S and the Netherlands' Isispace, which set out the scientific requirements and translated them into technical specifications, which include a 13-cm telescope and an ultraviolet-visible spectrometer.
At the same time, Blue Skies is developing a second satellite called Twinkle, built by Airbus, which will be equipped with a large telescope and a visible-infrared spectrometer linked to the Teledyne sensor, specializing in spectroscopic measurements of the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.
Blue Skies did not disclose how much membership will cost, saying only that this information will be available “coming soon.”
Despite the funding and effort that goes into launching an actual satellite into space, Blue Skies remains a fairly small operation: the company is based in the UK and Italy and claims to employ just 12 people.