New Space 3.0 Enables Responsiveness, Resilience and Availability

Christina Aas is the Technology Director for SmallSat Systems at Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, where she leads a talented team in developing Norway’s next generation of small satellites to meet governmental and societal needs. With a strong academic background, Christina holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s in aerospace engineering and has completed management courses, including at the International Space University (ISU). She co-founded Science & Technology AS in 2010, which became one of Oslo’s fastest-growing companies, earning the 5th place Gazelle ranking in 2016.

Through this article, Aas emphasises the increasing importance of space assets and capabilities for national security and prosperity. She also discusses the role of space-based systems in enhancing military capabilities, providing monitoring and surveillance and supporting communication.

Space assets and capabilities are increasingly important to support inter- and national security and prosperity. In 1982, the US established its Space Command. In 2004, the EU established the European Defence Agency (EDA). However, in 2019, a wave of establishment occurred: NATO Space Policy, US Space Force, UK and France Space Commands. In 2020, Italy and Denmark followed with their space commands, and the Norwegian Intelligence Service was appointed Norway’s military space authority. NATO also established its Space Centre in 2020. In 2021, Germany, Spain and Canada established their Space Commands. Space-based systems enhance military abilities to anticipate threats and plan responses with greater speed, effectiveness and precision.

Norway’s geographical location entails a greater need for space-based services to provide monitoring and surveillance, as well as communication. A civilian-military collaboration has been set up to ensure a cost-efficient build-up of satellite-based services. Thanks to the miniaturization of electronics and the CubeSat revolution, small satellites (<500 kg) have become increasingly capable. However, to use these smaller satellites for critical services, they need to offer high reliability and availability.

In 2022, Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) purchased most shares in SmallSat provider NanoAvionics, and we were able to bring into the company our over 200 years of history and experience in innovating new technologies and integrating complex system solutions.

“With new space 3.0 we are setting a new performance standard for small satellites, looking beyond launch success and evolving tech capabilities to address mission longevity, availability and reliability” 

This has eventually led to what we now call the New Space 3.0 revolution, which is rooted in what our customers ask of us in the market and our over 40 years of legacy in developing critical space systems.

KDA is a system provider and our merging with NanoAvionics allowed us to better assess a user’s need for information and translate this to which sensor suite and platform is best fit for purpose, which mission concept tailors their operational needs and latency requirements and offering a secure handling of the entire process, including launch and operations.

Our heritage from Legacy Space means we have a very strong background in developing long-lifetime, high-reliability and availability satellite systems. Now we observe that the typical legacy space domain is moving towards the New Space domain in terms of a need for providing continuously more cost-efficient solutions, translating to the accepted use of more Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components, relieving some of the reliability, redundancy and verification requirements to get a faster-time-to-market solution to answer commercial needs. Typically, legacy space meant building a unique configuration and design for a one-off project related to a particular set of user needs; however, today we see a shift in the market towards more standardization of platforms and payloads (shifting the configurability to in-orbit instead) to enable shorter lead times and affordable projects. 

Similarly, in New Space, we observe in dialogue with all our customers several trends moving New Space closer to Legacy Space. We are past the years of only demonstrating concepts and New Space is today offering solutions for critical societal services and defence applications. This entails we need to improve time in orbit and time in orbit. We need a responsive industry capable of delivering on-demand and rapidly evolving its systems to meet constant upgrades in demands for more data, lower latency, higher resolution, greater coverage, etc. Customers need to trust that the platforms they buy will serve their purpose for 5+ years in orbit without failures. They demand higher reliability systems for less cost. Our answer to this trend is New Space 3.0.

With New Space 3.0, we are setting a new performance standard for small satellites, looking beyond launch success and evolving tech capabilities to address mission longevity, availability and reliability. Kongsberg NanoAvionics is very proud of our 100percent success rate in achieving contact with all our satellites after launch, with zero dead-on arrivals. We are furthermore very proud of our 92.3% mission full-lifetime success rate (with an industry average of 72.7percent).

Several steps have been taken to bring us into the New Space 3.0 standard: 1) enhanced and prolonged radiation testing of all subsystems; 2) increased requirements for reliability asked of suppliers; 3) standardization of satellite buses. When implementing these steps, one achieves a stronger relationship with the supply chain, leading to shorter lead times and reduced costs in non-recurring engineering hours.

The geopolitical situation of today has resulted in the need for a responsive space industry with the ability to rapidly deliver reliable systems serving demanding applications. KDA is part of a European Defence Fund project called REACTS, where the goal is to enable the replacement of satellites in orbit within 72 hours. This level of ambition calls for a space industry capable of offering pre-qualified satellite buses for fast payload integration, modular designs, standardised architectures, plug-and-play interfaces and constellation-optimized production lines, enabling high-volume batches and a redundant supply chain.

With responsive space as a baseline, space-based missile early warning and persistent ISR services can be brought forward, as well as search-and-rescue and critical environmental monitoring services to ensure a sustainable and secure planet for our next generation.