ONEWEB SATELLITES; REVOLUTIONIZING THE ECONOMICS OF SPACE THROUGH INDUSTRIALIZATION

The commercial “New Space” revolution has fueled the creation of an industry poised to enable applications never before imagined. Recent developments in small satellite technologies and modeling techniques are enabling a new class of cost effective, space-based capability. When combined with principles of mass production, these developments offer the ability to explore the Earth and the solar system around us in ways not achievable by large satellites.

Successful implementation of small satellite mass production is not as simple as an assembly line of workers installing standardized products. While high-volume production might offer the ability to create low-cost vehicles; design flaws, lack of quality control, and loss of configuration management become catastrophic when cascaded across the development of a constellation. OneWeb Satellites, Inc. (OWS) is the first serial producer of satellites revolutionizing the industry through high quality, cost predictable, rapidly developed small satellite platforms.

The Southwest Research Institute^® (SwRI) is one of the oldest and largest independent, nonprofit, applied research and development organizations in the United States. With its world renowned commitment to space-based science over the past four decades, SwRI recognized early the impact of small satellites on space-based science. This commitment was most recently demonstrated by its CYGNSS constellation. To bring the full impact of the New Space revolution to space-based science, SwRI has joined forces with OWS. This alliance enables prototype small satellite missions that can be transitioned to operational constellations. We discuss how this is achieved in our COSPAR 2019 presentation.