The modern era of low-flying satellites may begin this week

Clarity-1 at the pad

Albedo’s first big test may come within the next week and the launch of the “Transporter-13” mission on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The company’s first satellite, Clarity-1, is 530 kg (1170 pounds) and riding atop the stack of ridesharing spacecraft. The mission could launch as soon as this coming weekend from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The Clarity-1 satellite will be dropped off between 500 and 600 km orbit and then attempt to lower itself to an operational orbit 274 km (170 miles) above the planet.

This is a full-up version of Albedo’s satellite design. The spacecraft is larger than a full-size refrigerator, similar to a phone booth, and is intended to operate for a lifetime of about five years, depending on the solar cycle. Clarity-1 is launching near the peak of the 11-year solar cycle, so this could reduce its active lifetime.

Albedo recently won a contract from the US Air Force Research Laboratory that is worth up to $12 million to share VLEO-specific, on-orbit data and provide analysis to support the development of new missions and payloads beyond its own optical sensors.

Serving many different customers

The advantages of such a platform include superior image quality, less congested orbits, and natural debris removal as inoperable satellites are pulled down into Earth’s atmosphere and burnt up.

But what about the drawbacks? In orbits closer to Earth the primary issue is atomic oxygen, which is highly reactive and energetic. There are also plasma eddies and other phenomena that interfere with the operation of satellites and degrade their materials. This makes VLEO far more hazardous than higher altitudes. It’s also more difficult to capture precise imagery.

“The hardest part is pointing and attitude control,” Haddad said, “because that’s already hard in LEO, when you have a big telescope and you’re trying to get a high resolution. Then you put it in VLEO, where the Earth’s rotation beneath is moving faster, and it just exacerbates the problem.”

In the next several years, Albedo is likely to reach a constellation sized at about 24 satellites, but that number will depend on customer demand, Haddad said. Albedo has previously announced about half a dozen of its commercial customers who will task Clarity-1 for various purposes, such as power and pipeline monitoring or solar farm maintenance.

But first, it has to demonstrate its technology.