Few space companies begin at home, yet that is exactly where it all began for AlbaOrbital. The ten-person Glasgow startup is leading the push to democratise space itself, developing and selling PocketQubes – small satellites which may be considered the perfect fit for a relatively small space company. But size can be misleading: Alba Orbital is pushing back the boundaries of space.
“Historically, it’s only been governments or really large commercial entities that have been able to ‘do’ space in any meaningful way”, says Tom Walkinshaw, Alba Orbital’s CEO and founder. He started the company in 2013, having left university and deciding he wanted to work in the space industry. “I said, ‘What industry do I want to work in?’ and space was one of the top choices.” Without huge investment, and initially unsure of a direction, Walkinshaw had but one place to set up. “It started in my bedroom, of all places. Because I had no money, it was the only place to be”.
Investment is an obvious hurdle when developing items to be launched into, deployed in, and to reliably transmit data back from, space. Or, as Walkinshaw puts it, “Space is really capital-intensive.” But breaking barriers to entry was something Walkinshaw feels he had no choice in. “I had to start my own company really. It was my only option. I wanted to do space, and there was no opportunity to work in any other company locally.” The hint of an opportunity was there too, with it seeming to Walkinshaw that building a ground-up space company could be achieved for the first time. “A number of events like funding and the standardisation of satellites” are what inspired Alba Orbital’s creation.
Four years on from launching in Walkinshaw’s bedroom, Alba Orbital is achieving the unthinkable: pushing to develop small satellites capable of delivering functioning payloads to space. Working in partnership with the European Space Agency, the company is planning a pilot launch of its Unicorn-1 picosatellite, at the same time developing the larger Unicorn-2 model – the world’s first picosatellite equipped with quadruple deployable solar panels.
At the heart of both designs is something which could easily be overlooked: small modular elements called PocketQubes. Beginning life as a concept devised by Morehead State University professor Bob Twiggs, Walkinshaw quickly saw the potential. “If there were going to be more PocketQubes, then there needed to be someone to sell the PocketQubes”. And in Alba Oribtal and Walkinshaw’s vision of the future, there were going to be many more. For Walkinshaw, a revolution in space development was coming.
“PocketQubes are small standardised satellites which come in different units,” explains Walkinshaw. “You get ‘1P’, which are 5cm by 5cm x 5cm, you get ‘2P’ which are 5cm x 5cm x 10cm, and ‘3P’ which is 5cm x 5cm x 15cm”. The different sizes allow different missions.” Alba Orbital’s Unicorn-1 is a 1P satellite, while the Unicorn-2 device is 2P. A 3P satellite is completely feasible too, because, “If you can’t fit your payload in the little satellite, then you can extend it a little bit and have the satellite that’s the right size for your mission”.
Such missions could be anything from plane or boat tracking, weather forecasting and Earth imagery, to connecting the internet of things or communications backhauls for sensors in fields in remote regions. Tasks which larger satellites currently achieve, but with traditional access restrictions. As Walkinshaw points out, PocketQubes mean “you can fire your technology into space”. Perhaps not yet individuals – the 1P Unicorn-1 platform starts at €159,000 (£142,000) – but the potential for smaller non-traditional entities is there. In acting on it, AlbaOrbital seeks to open up and democratise space. “It’s almost like going from the mainframe era of computers and the internet to democratised access to internet. It’s the same thing for space”.
Walkinshaw is thoughtful on many aspects of space. On spaceship building – a growing industry in Alba Orbital’s home city of Glasgow – he notes, “If nobody does it, we’re going to be stuck on this rock forever.” PocketQubes, however, won’t be stuck on Earth for long. And maybe one day, thousands will transmit data back to Earth unseen; just as frequent human payloads take to the stars.
Written by WIRED, in partnership with Qualcomm Snapdragon Gigabit LTE.
Qualcomm Snapdragon is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
