AUSTIN, Texas — The first spacecraft built by satellite manufacturing startup Apex continues to work well after a year in orbit as the company leverages that experience for future spacecraft.
The Aries SN1 spacecraft launched last March on the SpaceX Transporter-10 rideshare mission. The spacecraft was a demonstration of the design of the Aries spacecraft, which can accommodate 150 kilograms of payload, and was also used by several customers that included Anduril and Booz Allen Hamilton.
A year later, the spacecraft is working “completely nominally,” said Ian Cinnamon, chief executive of Apex, in an interview. During initial operations and commissioning of the satellite there were a few anomalies, but he said those could be resolved through software updates, allowing Apex and its customers to continue using SN1 through this day.
The importance of software is one of the key lessons from that year of operating SN1. “Software is the most important aspect of a satellite, and I think it’s often times the thing that is forgotten about a little bit because it’s not the cool, shiny hardware,” he said.
That included using software updates to fix ground station configuration and radio issues on the spacecraft and improve the performance of the satellite’s guidance, navigation and control system. “All of these things that we could do without hardware changes has really impressed me.”
The customers for SN1 continue to use the spacecraft, but Cinnamon said he expected their work to start to wind down. Apex plans to keep using it as an on-orbit software testbed through the rest of its projected five-year life.
Other companies have approached Apex about using SN1, but the company prefers to use the spacecraft for internal tests once its original customers are done. “Our software teams are itching to be able to use it more and more, so we want to fulfill our customer obligations and then use it internally,” he said.
Cinnamon said there are five more Aries spacecraft in its factory, three of which are complete and two nearly finished. He deferred to his customers on when those satellites will be launched, noting in some cases those customers “want to buy it and store it on a shelf for a rainy day and might not have a launch date in mind.”
“There’s a big pull that we’re feeling right now from the government side, especially for defense-related missions,” he said of demand for Aries. That includes exploring opportunities to participate in the proposed Golden Dome missile-defense system. There is also interest in using the version of Aries adapted for geostationary orbit missions for space situational awareness applications.
Apex plans to continue its approach of being a merchant supplier of satellite buses rather than become a prime contractor for missions. “Our expertise is being able to produce the productized satellite buses super quickly, with an upfront price point, and that’s where it ends,” he explained.
The company is settling into a new Los Angeles factory, with a quarter of the production facilities on line now with the rest in the next 60 days. At full capacity, the factory will be able to produce 12 satellites a month, although Cinnamon said it will take time to ramp up to that capacity based on customer demand.
He said Apex did not take the success of SN1 for granted, noting the problems that other companies have had with their first satellites. “Our goal here is really to give folks a reliable offering for the market so that they can specialize in what would they do, and they don’t have to worry about the satellite bus side.”