There are many reasons why a commercial organisation wants to get involved in academic research. First of all, it is fun and exciting! We get to be part of ground-breaking research, new ideas and new scientific experiments. But more importantly, we are passionate about space and we truly care about where the satellite industry is going and how quickly it grows. We want to help in any way we can. Student projects often operate on extremely tight budgets and a lot of precious time and effort is spent on securing mission funding.
To support future skill-building within the academic community, we developed Bright Start, an academic programme, specially designed to ease the burden of flight and ground software development for student projects. At the first glance, it may not seem sensible to use off-the-shelf software for student projects, but our platform is not a finished and ready-to-use solution, it is a component-based development environment, that can be used to create the unique software package for satellite mission. It helps students to fully cover their most relevant mission and learning objectives quicker and more efficiently within the limited timescales of the course project.
As part of our Bright Start programme, we offer to sponsor up to three of the most interesting and promising academic missions a year. The winners gain free access to our flight and ground software, no strings attached! Read on to find out more about one of our 2021 winners and their mission.
Our 2022/23 Sponsorship Applications are now open until 16th October 2022. Apply to be sponsored now!
SeaLion, Old Dominion University
SeaLion is 3U CubeSat, that is being designed and developed by a team of students and professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia. This smallsat is a collaboration between Old Dominion University, the United States Coast Guard Academy and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Like many other academic CubeSat spacecraft, it is a demonstration mission aiming to advance the technology readiness levels of its payloads, of which there are three:
an impedance probe, designed and developed by the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and Air Force Institute of Technology
a commercial-off-the-shelf multi-spectral sensor
a deployable composite structure to be validated in orbit
SeaLion is rather an unusual mission for Bright Ascension to be involved in. It will be launched into very low Earth orbit with non-rechargeable batteries as the only power source, which makes the expected mission life of the satellite around 10 days.
An additional challenge of the SeaLion mission is its timescale. The satellite is expected to be launched as a secondary payload onboard the NG 18/19 mission out of Wallops Island, VA in August 2022 on an Antares Rocket. With only a few months before the launch date, the pressure is mounting on rapid development and a no-risk/no-failure scenario.
Luckily, this is exactly what Bright Ascension’s software is all about. New technology demonstration missions need to be developed fast and made fail-proof to validate the payload quickly and at low cost. It is easier said than done, but we can help. Our Flight Software Development Kit allows developers to build their mission software package quickly, using our extensive library of pre-validated and configurable off-the-shelf components – no matter how unique or unusual the project can be.
It may be easy to build a CubeSat, but it is hard to ensure that nothing goes wrong with it in orbit. Our heavily tested, proven code is developed to strict coding standards for mission-critical software and our library comes with pre-validated components with extensive flight heritage to reduce the risk of failure.
We are no strangers to missions with tight timescales and only a few months scheduled for software development. Take a look at our case studies: Faraday Phoenix, Picasso and CASE. As part of the sponsorship package, Old Dominion University received full access to our Flight Software Development Kit and Mission Control Software, which will be key in ensuring that the satellite software package is fail-proof and developed on schedule, and in making yet another mission a success.
“The ODU payload is a technological demonstration mission for a deployable structure with a high (deployable) surface area to (packaging) volume ratio being the benchmark for the future CubeSat mission. It will demonstrate a novel single triggered passive deployable mechanism along with in-situ sensing of composite deployable structure in space condition.”
Jimesh Bhagatji, ODU PhD student in charge of the payload
ACADEMIC PROGRAMME
BRIGHT START
Download the Bright Start brochure to find everything you need to know about our Academic Programme.
License Plans: specially designed and heavily discounted product bundle licenses for the academic community
Training and Support: to make sure you have sufficient training and support to use our software, we provide access to member-exclusive support forum and organise shared training sessions
Sponsorship: an opportunity to get your academic mission sponsored with free FSDK and MCS license bundle. We sponsor 3 academic missions each year.
At Bright Ascension, we want to ensure you stay at the forefront of technological innovation and have the best available tools for mission development and operation. We’ve been working extra hard to bring you our latest Mission Control Software release, which can be downloaded through our customer support portal.
The latest release comes with a host of useful new features, including:
direct support for Leaf Space Ground Station Network: significantly simplifies and accelerates access to one of the leading and fast-growing ground segment providers
export and import of server settings: facilitates re-use and saves considerable time and effort during system set up
support for CCSDS COP1 protocol for reliable commanding
various bug fixes
These are only a few of the exciting new features included into the latest Mission Control Software release. To find out more, please contact us at enquiries@brightascension.com.
The latest version is available to our existing customers via our Support Portal.
Bright Start Academic Sponsorship
There are many reasons why a commercial organisation wants to get involved in academic research. First of all, it is fun and exciting! We get to be part of ground-breaking research, new ideas and new scientific experiments. But more importantly, we are passionate about space and we truly care about where the satellite industry is going and how quickly it grows. We want to help in any way we can. Student projects often operate on extremely tight budgets and a lot of precious time and effort is spent on securing mission funding.
To support future skill-building within the academic community, we developed Bright Start, an academic programme, specially designed to ease the burden of flight and ground software development for student projects. At the first glance, it may not seem sensible to use off-the-shelf software for student projects, but our platform is not a finished and ready-to-use solution, it is a component-based development environment, that can be used to create the unique software package for satellite mission. It helps students to fully cover their most relevant mission and learning objectives quicker and more efficiently within the limited timescales of the course project.
As part of our Bright Start programme, we offer to sponsor up to three of the most interesting and promising academic missions a year. The winners gain free access to our flight and ground software, no strings attached! Read on to find out more about one of our 2021 winners and their mission.
Our 2022/23 Sponsorship Applications are now open until 16th October 2022. Apply to be sponsored now!
SeaLion, Old Dominion University
SeaLion is 3U CubeSat, that is being designed and developed by a team of students and professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia. This smallsat is a collaboration between Old Dominion University, the United States Coast Guard Academy and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Like many other academic CubeSat spacecraft, it is a demonstration mission aiming to advance the technology readiness levels of its payloads, of which there are three:
an impedance probe, designed and developed by the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and Air Force Institute of Technology
a commercial-off-the-shelf multi-spectral sensor
a deployable composite structure to be validated in orbit
SeaLion is rather an unusual mission for Bright Ascension to be involved in. It will be launched into very low Earth orbit with non-rechargeable batteries as the only power source, which makes the expected mission life of the satellite around 10 days.
An additional challenge of the SeaLion mission is its timescale. The satellite is expected to be launched as a secondary payload onboard the NG 18/19 mission out of Wallops Island, VA in August 2022 on an Antares Rocket. With only a few months before the launch date, the pressure is mounting on rapid development and a no-risk/no-failure scenario.
Luckily, this is exactly what Bright Ascension’s software is all about. New technology demonstration missions need to be developed fast and made fail-proof to validate the payload quickly and at low cost. It is easier said than done, but we can help. Our Flight Software Development Kit allows developers to build their mission software package quickly, using our extensive library of pre-validated and configurable off-the-shelf components – no matter how unique or unusual the project can be.
It may be easy to build a CubeSat, but it is hard to ensure that nothing goes wrong with it in orbit. Our heavily tested, proven code is developed to strict coding standards for mission-critical software and our library comes with pre-validated components with extensive flight heritage to reduce the risk of failure.
We are no strangers to missions with tight timescales and only a few months scheduled for software development. Take a look at our case studies: Faraday Phoenix, Picasso and CASE. As part of the sponsorship package, Old Dominion University received full access to our Flight Software Development Kit and Mission Control Software, which will be key in ensuring that the satellite software package is fail-proof and developed on schedule, and in making yet another mission a success.
Although a lot of the framework and library components are ready to go by having the kit withthe flight-ready software, I was able to look at the code, see how they chose to implement things and learn how it all worked. So even though off-the-shelf software might not immediately seem suitable for a project with learning objectives, it actually really was.
Maeve Doyle, PhD Student, Software and Operations, EIRSAT-1 Team, University College Dublin Centre for Space Research
ACADEMIC PROGRAMME
BRIGHT START
Download the Bright Start brochure to find everything you need to know about our Academic Programme.
License Plans: specially designed and heavily discounted product bundle licenses for the academic community
Training and Support: to make sure you have sufficient training and support to use our software, we provide access to member-exclusive support forum and organise shared training sessions
Sponsorship: an opportunity to get your academic mission sponsored with free FSDK and MCS license bundle. We sponsor 3 academic missions each year.
Overview
The Faraday Phoenix mission, a re-flight of the original Faraday 1 satellite lost at launch, is part of In-Space Missions’ Faraday programme. Co funded by ESA (European Space Agency) and the UK Space Agency, it enables multiple third-party payloads to ‘rideshare ’ on a single satellite platform, providing fast and low-cost access to space.
The Faraday Phoenix satellite carries multiple payloads, including the demonstration payload for Lacuna Space, which is developing a ground-breaking satellite IoT service; In-Space’s own Babel ultra-wideband technology to enable uploadable payloads directly to space on future missions; SatixFy Space Systems’ satcom technology, supporting up to 4Gbps of data transmission, and allowing companies to process large amounts of data in orbit; and the Airbus Prometheus 1 payload with a Software Defined Radio.
Challeges
Tight timescales
Like many other missions within the booming commercial satellite sector, the Faraday Phoenix had very tight project timescales, giving us less than six months for software development.
Multiple third party payloads
The Faraday Phoenix carries a large number of third-party payloads, including a host of software defined radios of various types. This significantly increases the number of required software interfaces and adds more complexity and risks to the mission.
Solutions
Tight timescales
The unique modular approach of our Flight Software Development Kit allows for the complex flight software to be built quickly and effectively, which means we were able to support the lead times and deliver our cutting-edge spacecraft technology promptly and efficiently.
Multiple third-party payloads
Using the inherent modularity of our flight software, we proposed a strong split between platform and payload elements. This split enables a near decoupling of platform and payload software work. Using this approach, platform software was completed earlier than payload software and thus provided a stable baseline for mission development and a mechanism for permitting relatively late stability in most payload requirements.
Outcome
The Faraday Phoenix satellite was successfully launched onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 30th June 2021.
The spacecraft is the first in the series of In-Space Missions’ Faraday launches which will include both dedicated customer missions and more payload rideshares launching approximately every six months from Q1 2022. It will offer space-based service providers faster access to orbit, which takes away many of the costs and complexities of a dedicated satellite. The Faraday Phoenix satellite successfully demonstrated and validated this service in orbit.
Join us on Stand D25 in Hall 4
We are excited to be returning to Space Tech Expo Europe, the largest B2B space event in Europe. The show will take place on 16th-18th, November 2021, and will be our first event of this scale since the start of the global pandemic.
Come and meet our team on Stand D25 in Hall 4 to get a hands-on interactive demo of our flight and ground software products and learn how our innovative space solutions can help you launch your mission sooner, while also keeping the costs down and reducing your risks.
As an essential part of the fast-growing UK space ecosystem, we were thrilled to take part in the Ignite Space 2021 event, organised by the UK Space Agency and dedicated to bringing together the UK space sector. Ignite Space took place on Thursday 11th November 2021 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, only steps away from our office.
It was our first in-person event since the start of the pandemic and it was tremendous to catch up with the industry, as well as attend and participate in some very good and interesting discussions.
Watch Peter Mendham, our CEO, talk about accessing supply chains for space sector SMEs at Ignite Space 2021.
A distributed systems approach can be an effective tool in software development for space missions. Read on to find out what a distributed system is and how it impacts the development and operations of a space system.
What is a distributed system?
A distributed system is a collection of computing elements that are all executing simultaneously and at least semi-independently. They can be on the same computer or different ones, they can also be simple or complex. Traditionally, you would think of a distributed system as a network, but it can also be operating on a single processor. A distributed system aims to achieve a common goal or implement a desired behaviour.
Space systems are already inherently distributed between space and ground, but it is important to see them as a whole, as a single system, where the responsibility is shared between computing elements.
However, the distribution does not have to stop at “space and ground”, it can be further extended to include multiple onboard computers, various smart payloads or even multiple satellites to form clusters and constellations. And while all the separate elements of such a system (e.g. multiple OBCs or multiple satellites) have their own functionality, only by working together they can complete the mission objectives.
The design of a distributed system, even if it needs to be extended beyond the “space and ground” elements, relies on different factors:
mission objectives
how the elements connect
how they communicate with each other
how the data is passed between them
if there’s any automation
where responsibilities lies
A relatively simple satellite with a single OBC for platform control and a single payload may not need a complex distributed system. But it is still important to view this as distributed as there are different elements working together to fulfil the mission, including the ground segment. A more complex system with multiple OBCs controlling the platform and multiple intelligent payloads can really benefit from the distributed approach.
Development process
Distributed systems come with their own challenges.
Having multiple elements means working with multiple interfaces. Integrating them together can be tricky.
From the operator’s perspective, it can be difficult to identify where issues occur. For example, if an operator wants to send a simple high level command to the spacecraft (e.g. “go to mission mode A”) and gets a failure message, it can be hard to identify where it happened in the system.
One way to try and stop this from happening is to develop elements that are loosely coupled and have a well-defined interface. This way the elements have clearly designed roles to perform, can be developed in complete isolation and are easier to test and re-use.
However, the challenge of multiple interfaces still remains, and this is where using the model-based approach can be very useful. It allows you to describe your entire distributed system in a model and use tooling to generate the interface software for communication between the various elements. This approach significantly reduces the complexity and removes human error.
Operational impact
Operating a distributed system means having multiple interactions to achieve overall system behaviour. You can reduce the complexity of operations by splitting and distributing the responsibility between elements. This means the operator has less orchestration to do and it makes automation a lot easier.
In practice, this means that when the operator executes high level commands (e.g. “go to mission mode A”), they do not need to worry about all the details happening in the background and can fully focus on achieving the desired behaviour.
If you do not distribute responsibility, the elements will not be able to work independently of the operator. This does keep the operator more in control, but it decreases the operability and makes it more difficult to automate the mission.
Viewing space systems as distributed can be a powerful approach, as it offers significant development and operational benefits. Our product suite is model-based and is designed to support distributed systems.
Learn more: Book a demo
We’ve been evolving our technology over the past 12 years through extensive development work. During this time, our software has powered more than 50 spacecraft in orbit, helping them to maximise their mission potential.
Contact us today to see our products in action and arrange a one-to-one demo of our software, tailored to your unique mission needs and requirements.
Enabling portability across diverse hardware with a model-based approach
The recent boost in the commercial space sector has opened up an impressively wide choice of commercial off-the-shelf subsystems for satellite developers. While this unlocks multiple possibilities and helps to reduce mission costs, it can also create a significant challenge for software development.
Satellite software needs to be produced fast, it has to be reliable and cost-effective. And one way to address this is through software re-use. However, subsystem suppliers can vary greatly in their architectural philosophies, selection of interface protocols and adoption of standards. If the developer needs to work with a variety of hardware, software re-use can become difficult.
Do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to find out more or discuss further.
6 Helpful Tips for Operations-Led Software Development
Traditionally, space system developers see flight software as separate and independent from its ground counterpart. Often, the two systems are developed by different teams or even different contractors and at different life cycles of the mission.
In this article, we want to offer you an alternative approach that focusses on what you are trying to achieve in terms of your mission rather than how it is implemented. Don’t think of flight and ground software as two disconnected systems separated by spacelink. Think of them as two components of a single larger structure. It will help you to avoid a lot of issues later on in your mission.
1. Consider CONOPS early
The concept of operations should be the main driver of your system design. Focus on what you want to achieve and how you want to do it – i.e. how you are going to fly and operate your spacecraft. CONOPS is something that should be developed very early on and it should drive everything you do in terms of software and hardware. To avoid serious issues later on in your mission, try to consider all aspects of operations, such as available data volumes, bandwidth, etc.
2. Review commanding
As part of CONOPS, consider how your software and your spacecraft are going to be used and how the information should be moved around. For example, you may have three parameters – latitude, longitude and altitude of your spacecraft – but if you develop them as stand-alone parameters that need to be retrieved separately, they can become redundant. When sampled, latitude and longitude may be seconds apart and the information you receive becomes pointless. To make sense, these parameters should be accessed at the same time.
For efficient system design, consider how your spacecraft works and how you are going to work with your data.
3. Observe
It’s important to be able to observe everything that goes on with your spacecraft. Your software and hardware onboard are probably quite complex and if anything goes wrong, you want to be able to investigate it and handle it efficiently. To achieve this, all parts of your system, both flight and ground, should be visible.
However, there has to be a balance between being able to observe everything and dealing with a resource constrained system, small contact times and low bandwidth. It can be a real challenge to find an easy way to convey the state of all systems but only share the information that will be useful.
4. Assess security
With the industry growing more public, security is becoming more and more important. 5-10 years ago it was almost a novel idea in the smallsat sector, with relatively few missions taking security as seriously as we need to today. It is not just encryption and authentication of spacecraft or spacelinks, it’s the security of the whole flight and ground system that needs to be considered from the very early stages in all parts of your design, because it is really hard to add it in later on.
Find or compile a list of threats that could potentially exist and decide which ones are relevant to your mission.
5. Plan for failure
Anticipating failure is central to everything you do in operations, because it is inevitable that at some point something will go wrong. It is important to be prepared for this moment. Think of the entire flight and ground system, how it can fail and the different ways you can deal with it. You may consider your design, your hardware or software choices; you may also think of how you can design your system so that when this does happen, the issue can be resolved quickly and effectively.
For example, make sure that telemetry information in a safe mode beacon is actually relevant to resolving all the issues which could get you there.
6. Test
Testing is not very exciting, it takes up a lot of time and it is quite laborious, but it is vital and critical for your success. The more testing you do and the more effective you can make it, the more successful your mission will be. It is great if you can do “day in the life” testing of your complete satellite, but it is much better if you can arrange for an even longer campaign, for example, “week in the life”.
The more representative your testing is, the more issues you will avoid. For example, if you are going to be using a ground station you’ve never worked with before, make sure you talk to it weeks or months before the launch to ensure there are no problems in communication.
To support efficient flight-ground system development, our software products offer tight and easy integration. The entire flight software package, developed through our Flight Software product, can be quickly and easily understood by our ground system Mission Control Software (MCS). This approach means that for those using both our products there is little configuration required for the mission. Read more about the benefits of integrated flight-ground software development here.
Learn more: Book a demo
We’ve been evolving our technology over the past 12 years through extensive development work. During this time, our software has powered more than 50 spacecraft in orbit, helping them to maximise their mission potential.
Contact us today to see our products in action and arrange a one-to-one demo of our software, tailored to your unique mission needs and requirements.
We have successfully completed a fund-raising round and secured financing commitments through private investments to support further expansion and development of its product offering. We have raised £1m of additional equity through the issue of new shares to match development funding that has been awarded to Bright Ascension by the European Space Agency (ESA).
We will use these funds for the development of next generation satellite software infrastructure, which will offer its customers a complete end-to-end software solution for space-based service provision. This expansion stage closely correlates to our participation in ESA ARTES Pioneer programme, a multi-year project set to design and develop a cutting-edge end-to-end solution which will enable a wide range of companies to create innovative satellite constellation services at a significantly reduced cost and within a reduced timeframe.
The majority investor, Capital for Colleagues (C4C), the investment vehicle focused on opportunities in the Employee Owned Business sector, have not only been our long-standing partner since 2016, but also helped us with re-organising and adopting the employee ownership model. This new and fairer structure enables us to build a world class organisation in order to attract, retain, motivate and harness the best talent in the field, which will play a crucial role in achieving its growth goals.
Scottish Enterprise also becomes a shareholder having invested in Bright Ascension through its Early Stage Growth Challenge Fund.
“We are very excited to have secured this additional funding that will allow us to continue our ESA project work and will safeguard our existing roadmap and end-to-end product suite development for a stronger place in the industry.”
Peter Mendham, CEO at Bright Ascension
“C4C has been a very supportive partner for Bright Ascension since the initial investment in 2016 and has helped us to establish a robust employee ownership culture in the business,” he continued.
“We are delighted to report this significant new investment into Bright Ascension, which will enhance its ability to deliver cutting-edge solutions for its clients and gives us great confidence for its future,” said Alistair Currie, Chief Executive of Capital for Colleagues. “The post-investment valuation of Bright Ascension represents a further material uplift in the value of our investment, and further validates our strategy focused on Employee Owned Businesses.”
ESA ARTES Pioneer programme is set to design and develop a cutting-edge end-to-end solution which will enable a wide range of companies to create innovative constellation services at a significantly reduced cost. The programme includes a considerable expansion of spacecraft production capability at AAC Clyde Space and development of a novel, efficient interface to give customers easy access to their mission data and seamless integration with the services they provide.
Bright Ascension’s role in the programme, estimated at €2.2M EUR, is to deliver the next generation end-to-end software infrastructure which will allow customers to scale up their satellite-based service provision. Building on the success of existing products and sizeable industry expertise, including a recent UKSA-funded project specifically focussed on scalability in space operations, Bright Ascension will develop a next-generation space software platform which aims to make mission and service delivery more efficient at a noticeably lower cost and within a reduced timeframe.
“We are thrilled to be providing a software platform for AAC Clyde Space, our long-standing partner, to help revolutionise their industry-leading space-as-a-service offering.”
Peter Mendham, CEO at Bright Ascension
“This is also an exciting opportunity for us as it integrates well with our existing roadmap and will allow us to accelerate our development and secure a stronger place in the industry. The products developed as part of the ESA ARTES Pioneer programme will form a key part of our current growth and will help us build on our industry position as an innovative space software technology provider,” said Peter Mendham, CEO.
For evaluation and educational purposes we offer a Classroom Academic license, which is entirely free of charge for classroom use. What’s more, it comes with all the same support and training offered to paying Academic Flight License users.
Getting your mission sponsored couldn’t be easier! All you need to do is complete and submit the application form on our website. Make sure to include as much detail as you can about your project and your mission. Alternatively, the form can be available offline – please contact us on brightstart@brightascension.com to receive a copy of the application form.
The Bright Start Academic Programme is open to faculty, staff, or students at a degree-granting academic institution. Academic licenses are subject to the Bright Ascension T&Cs and are restricted to academic use only. Usage for commercial purposes is not supported by Academic liceses.
The MCS is compatible with other flight software, assumming that the other flight software supports at least a subset of the protocols utilised by the MCS. It is also possible to develop GeneratonOne ground deployments which can act as spacecraft proxies to adapt the MCS tobe compatible with other flight software.
Bright Ascension provides turnkey solutions for missions and payloads based on the use of its own Flight Software Development Kit (FSDK). Just contact us via our contact page, explain your needs, and we can discuss how we can help your mission development.
Each product and version comes with its own dedicated licence conditions. Please contact us for more detail on the terms and conditions associated with each product.
BOOK DEMO
Space Software Built Around Your Mission
Select the software product and complete the form.
