Spaceflight Industries, Inc. is an American private

aerospace company An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry. ...

based out of

Herndon, Virginia Herndon is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Washington metropolitan area, Washington, D.C. metropolitan area of the United States. The population was 23,292 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census. In 2020 ...

that specializes in

geospatial intelligence In the United States, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) is intelligence about the human activity on earth derived from the exploitation and analysis of imagery, signals, or signatures with geospatial information. GEOINT describes, assesses, and vis ...

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 Thales Alenia Space () is a Franco-Italian aerospace manufacturer. A joint venture between the French technology corporation Thales Group (67%) and Italian defense conglomerate Leonardo (33%), the company is the largest satellite manufactur ...

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 Andrews Space was founded in 1999 by Jason Andrews and Marian Joh to be a catalyst in the commercialization, exploration and development of space. Originally named Andrews Space & Technology, the company shortened its name in 2003 to Andrews Space ...

in 1999. Jason Blake has previous experience at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

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SpaceDev SpaceDev, a part of the "Space Systems Business" of Sierra Nevada Corporation, is prominent for its spaceflight and microsatellite work. It designed and built components for the hybrid rocket motors for Paul Allen's Tier One suborbital SpaceS ...

, 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

), 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

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 is one of the largest ''keiretsu'' in Japan and one of the largest corporate groups in the world. The major companies of the group include Mitsui & Co. (general trading company), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Nippon Paper Industries ...

and

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. BlackSky was not part of this deal. Through a business combination with Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp., Blacksky became a separate company quoted on the NYSE.

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 currently being built by LeoStella LLC, a joint venture between Spaceflight Industries and

. BlackSky Global-3 and BlackSky Global-4 satellites were launched aboard a

Rocket Lab Electron Electron is a two-stage, partially recoverable orbital launch vehicle developed by Rocket Lab, an American aerospace company with a wholly owned New Zealand subsidiary. Electron was developed to service the commercial small satellite launch mar ...

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

*
Spaceflight service

BlackSky service

EoPortal.org detail of payload adapter and List of payloads
{{Authority control Aerospace companies of the United States Private spaceflight companies American companies established in 2010 Companies based in Seattle Geographic data and information companies