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.
How did you manage meaningful attitude control with only torque rods? They would need to big (read: heavy) to be useful — was this just stabilising in inertial frame or active pointing?
Mag dipoles in chassis and components tend to lock tumbling satellites into the Earth’s magnetic field. Did you see this? Or did you see atmospheric drag dominate at this altitude?
>The drag coefficient was the headline: 12% better than our design target.
Is the drag much better than a regular cubesat? It doesn't look tremendously aerodynamic. From the description I was kind of expecting a design that minimized frontal area.
>Additional surface treatments will improve drag coefficient further.
Is surface drag that much of a contributor at orbital velocity?
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?
We actually didn't get to that part of the payload calibration campaign unfortunately, but all indications pointed towards getting geolocation between 5-10 meters on this first mission, driven primarily by star tracker quaternion error. Ephemeris and field angle map error was right in spec, so we were prepped to do an iterative line of sight pointing calibration but with the CMGs down, we didn't get to get there.
Future systems we've got a few updates though based on learnings, and we'll be shooting for closer to 3-5 meter geolocation error without ground control points (GCPs)
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.
I agree. If it wasn't written with an AI I would be shocked. Its got the classic "VLEO isn’t just a better orbit for imaging — it’s the next productive orbital layer." mdash and all. That style sends strong signals of lazyness, scammyness and unprofessionalism.
Why would I take a company seriously when they can't be bothered to write their own press statements and blog posts?
> 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.
> 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.
This is on the company blog. It ends with a call to action to either subscribe to their mailing list or explore their careers page.
It has the right tone for the goal. Tone policing isn’t helpful. The authors are even here answering questions which is very nice of them.
it looks like Toppher Haddad has two writing styles, the tech bro blog , and the style he used above to discuss the technical aspects of there optical technolgy, and that is high geek, high uber geek of the type generaly associated with an inability to comprehend others lack of incomprehension, so actualy an unusual integration of skills and aproaches
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.
> 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.
Space safety for sure on the cover, although I'm not sure we'll have that cover for future launches because it was less than easy to coordinate with the FCC on where to eject it.
The radio came from a supplier who has been investigating the issue. We had concerns with their NAND and ECC implementation, and we weren’t able to fully root-cause it with them. Going forward, we’ll be building our own radios, which will make it easier to test, iterate, and resolve issues like this internally, or at least be able to trace possible latch ups or destructive failures and implement the right levels of redundancy.
1. The proximity improves performance:
- Range^2: imaging, other sensing, closing link budgets (data you're sending or signals you're sensing)
- Range^3: SAR
- Range^4: Active sensing (lidar, radar, etc)
- Speed: Comms latency, time to intercept
- If you can build systems fast/cheap, this physics unlock creates a new paradigm for system architectures (compared to traditional cost/schedule/performance tradeoffs)
2. Diversification is important for resilience/deterrence
- Drag self cleans debris
- It's below the belts where radiation gets trapped after a nuclear detonation. Makes for not only a survivable orbit, but one with assured reconstitution
I think the main purpose, atleast in this case, is to enable very high resolution satellite imagery (whether or not that being a good thing in and of itself is another matter).
Our business model is focused on providing VLEO systems (satellites, buses, and full mission services). But future customers may be provide image services :)
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?
Not that kind of bus. A “satellite bus” is more of a standardized platform onto which mission-specific payloads are integrated. Saves having to design an entire spacecraft from scratch and gives you a known-good set of functionality.
topherhaddad|1 month ago
https://albedo.com/post/clarity-1-what-worked-and-where-we-g...
sjburt|1 month ago
notaurus|1 month ago
sbierwagen|1 month ago
Is the drag much better than a regular cubesat? It doesn't look tremendously aerodynamic. From the description I was kind of expecting a design that minimized frontal area.
>Additional surface treatments will improve drag coefficient further.
Is surface drag that much of a contributor at orbital velocity?
NoiseBert69|1 month ago
Stacks? Testing? Firmware Updates? Programming languages?
Thank you!
arjie|1 month ago
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?
ggm|1 month ago
relaxing|1 month ago
I’d be interested to read a postmortem of the systems engineering approach there.
topherhaddad|1 month ago
Alas.. the speed & resources of a startup. But we're learning.
londons_explore|1 month ago
Wonder why this didn't pick it up? Perhaps the test wasnt long enough?
wavesplash|1 month ago
jonah|1 month ago
heyflyguy|1 month ago
Alasater|1 month ago
Future systems we've got a few updates though based on learnings, and we'll be shooting for closer to 3-5 meter geolocation error without ground control points (GCPs)
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
parsimo2010|1 month ago
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.
Morromist|1 month ago
Why would I take a company seriously when they can't be bothered to write their own press statements and blog posts?
shrx|1 month ago
notahacker|1 month ago
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.
Aurornis|1 month ago
This is on the company blog. It ends with a call to action to either subscribe to their mailing list or explore their careers page.
It has the right tone for the goal. Tone policing isn’t helpful. The authors are even here answering questions which is very nice of them.
metalman|1 month ago
waldothedog|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
jacquesm|1 month ago
> 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.
Alasater|1 month ago
The radio came from a supplier who has been investigating the issue. We had concerns with their NAND and ECC implementation, and we weren’t able to fully root-cause it with them. Going forward, we’ll be building our own radios, which will make it easier to test, iterate, and resolve issues like this internally, or at least be able to trace possible latch ups or destructive failures and implement the right levels of redundancy.
MobiusHorizons|1 month ago
testing43523|1 month ago
topherhaddad|1 month ago
2. Diversification is important for resilience/deterrence - Drag self cleans debris - It's below the belts where radiation gets trapped after a nuclear detonation. Makes for not only a survivable orbit, but one with assured reconstitution
VoidWhisperer|1 month ago
wferrell|1 month ago
Great write up!
topherhaddad|1 month ago
Thank you!
bsder|1 month ago
allenrb|1 month ago