A Promising Internet Satellite Is Rendered Useless By Power Supply Issues

Astranis, a geostationary communications satellite operator, successfully deployed its "Arcturus" satellite from a Falcon Heavy rocket in May to provide internet connectivity from geostationary space. However, the satellite experienced an unexpected issue with a supplier's component on the solar array drive assembly, affecting its ability to maintain continuous power. Ars Technica reports: "The Astranis engineering team has been doing an incredible job working around the clock to troubleshoot the issue," [Astranis co-founder John Gedmark] said. "We have now reproduced the problem on the ground in a vacuum chamber, zeroed in on the exact source of the failure, and know how to fix it for future spacecraft. Because this failure occurred within the internal workings of a component supplied by an external vendor, we're not in a position to go into the full technical details." The disappointment in Gedmark's update is palpable. "This is a frustrating situation -- the Arcturus spacecraft is in a safe state and fully under our control, the payload and our other Astranis in-house designed components are all working perfectly, and the tanks are fueled for years of on-orbit operation," he said. "But unless something major changes, the mission of providing Internet connectivity in Alaska will be delayed." Astranis was founded in 2015 to determine whether microsatellites built largely in-house could deliver high-speed Internet from geostationary space at a low price. The launch of Arcturus marked the first demonstration that Astranis' small satellite technology worked in space and could survive the harsh radiation and thermal environment previously dominated by much larger satellites that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Given that this was an effort to test this technology on a shoestring budget, it is perhaps not surprising that the satellite ultimately failed due to some unforeseen problem. The real acid test for Astranis, now, is to ensure that it learns from this failure and that the company's second satellite works in space. In his update, Gedmark said the company understands how to quickly solve this issue on future spacecraft that are in production. The company is also working toward a solution to provide Internet service in Alaska, via Pacific Dataport, as initially planned with Arcturus. The backup plan, he said, "involves a special, multipurpose satellite that can operate as an on-orbit spare and bridge us to a full replacement satellite. We call this satellite UtilitySat. It can operate anywhere in the world, on multiple frequency bands, with the flexibility of a software-defined satellite. UtilitySat has been in the works for over a year, is in the final stages of integration, and is manifested on our very next launch that will take place at the end of this year."

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