RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The satellite exploration market is booming. Since 2010, 280 satellites per year have been launched worldwide, and the trend for the next decade is to triple.
The boom started with the Lusat-1 in 1990. CONAE told iProUP that several Earth observation missions were carried out to “generate adequate and timely spatial information about the continental and maritime territory, obtain data and images useful for agriculture, hydrology, environment, and management of natural and anthropic emergencies.”
Read also: Check out our coverage on Argentina
In addition, Argentina gained experience, capacity, and infrastructure. It carried out four missions with NASA (USA), ASI (Italy), CNES (France), DSRI (Denmark), and CSA (Canada).
Models of several tons (15 years of useful life) are built in the country. Also, nano and picosatellites, cube-shaped, 10 or 5 cm on a side (five-year lifetime). The following are already in orbit:
Large: SAC, SAOCOM 1a and 1b, for scientific purposes, and ARSAT 1 and 2, Nahuel 1A and Pehuensat-1, for telecommunications.
Nanosatellites: Capitán Beto, Manolito, BugSat 1, Tita, and those that make up the ÑuSat constellation, from Satellogic.
PICOSATELLITES
By the way, the country is the leader in Latin America: Brazil started later and, despite an investment 15 times higher, only this year did it launch its first one. The next one will be launched in 2023, together with Argentina.
“Our goal was always to adapt to the Argentine reality: to do something of quality according to our possibilities. We preferred to see where the business was: in observation, providing information about the Earth from space,” Fernando Hisas, advisor to the Executive and Technical Directorate of CONAE, explains to iProUP.
Gabriel Absi, manager of the space sector of INVAP, the main local company, reveals to iProUP: “Argentina can generate training and infrastructure. A new space plan will be announced this year, which will prepare it for the challenges of the future.”
Born in 1976, INVAP designed the most important satellites in the country (SAC and ARSAT) and signed the new ARSAT SG-1, which will offer broadband for Argentina and neighboring countries from 2024.
Another of the country’s major companies is Satellogic, founded in 2010 by Emiliano Kargieman and specialized in nanosatellites. After the merger with the CF Acquisition fund, its market value rose to US$850 million, and it is about to become a billion+ dollar “unicorn”.
With headquarters in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, it has 240 employees and 21 nanosatellites in orbit, with which it offers image analysis services to companies and governments (it invoices US$100 million per year).
With five years of history and its own investment of US$50,000, DiYSatellite put its DIY-1/Arduiqube into orbit in March using the Russian Soyuz-2 rocket.
The equipment is at an altitude of 600 kilometers and provides telemetry information. “It uses electronic components that can be found in any retail store, which shows that it is possible to build satellites at low cost,” Gustavo Carpignano, its founder, told iProUP.
According to the expert, putting it into orbit costs US$60,000, but they are looking to bring it down to US$8,000. “To do so, we are developing kits that can be easily manufactured in educational institutions. As they get smaller and smaller, several can be put together per mission, which greatly reduces the cost,” he adds.
An educational project that has become a company is Innova Space, from Mar del Plata. Alejandro Cordero, its CEO, reveals to iProUP that “the original idea was to introduce aerospace developments and new technologies in technical schools. The repercussion and potential allowed us to initiate the development of the mission to respond to the lack of cellular network coverage in IoT communications.”
For this purpose, they developed the MDQube SAT-1 picosatellite, measuring 10 x 5 x 5 centimeters and weighing 500 grams. According to Cordero, the equipment “will be shipped to Scotland, to be integrated into a box with another satellite. From there, it will fly to Cape Kennedy to be placed on the head of the Falcon rocket of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, on December 21.”
Innova Space received US$75,000 from the Neutron accelerator and $14.5 million from the Ministry of Productive Development. Its next goal is to offer wireless communication for agriculture, mining, maritime and environmental applications.
But Newspace does not stop at satellites. The market is so broad that there is room for alternative projects, such as Epic Aerospace, founded by 22-year-old Ignacio Montero.
The firm develops tugs that will take small satellites to their final orbit, which are placed in larger satellites that travel on the same rocket. It has offices in Buenos Aires and San Francisco and has already obtained funds in the first round.
Meanwhile, in La Rioja, an initiative anticipates a future trip to Mars: Solar54, from the public-private consortium FanIOT/Hamelbot. Its executive director, Martín Bueno, explains to iProUP that they seek to “create a professional-linked structure and network to develop the region.”
“The goal is to create a building that acts as a test platform and laboratory. It will be possible to carry out simulated missions for a crew to be in a confined situation, test technologies, and study human behavior. It is similar to The Mars Society’s MDRS base in Utah.”
The structure can be self-built by robots, and next year there will be a dome complex that will simulate life on Mars. Solar54 is seeking investment and is supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the provincial governments of La Rioja and Misiones.
THE GREAT CHALLENGE
Carpignano points out that “to be a power, we would need our own launcher” so as not to resort to suppliers from other countries (USA, China, and Russia) and reduce costs.
One of the local projects of this type is the Light Payload Satellite Injector (ISCUL), known as Tronador, of the company VENG, whose majority shareholder is CONAE. It has already carried out a successful test launch of the experimental vehicle VEx 1B at suborbital level from the Punta Indio Space Center in the province of Buenos Aires.
“It will take some time, there will be many tests, and it is not something for big projects, such as satellites of more than 1,000 kilograms. There is political will, and that may allow us to move forward,” said Hisas.
In this area, Tlon Space developed the Aventura I, an ultralight launcher for nanosatellites. It is cataloged as the lightest in the industry: it weighs half a ton. Its production cost is less than US$500,000, and it has been tested several times. This company from Buenos Aires was founded in 2004 and signed a cooperation agreement with CONAE.
LIA Aerospace also seeks to take small satellites into space with its own rocket. Its founders, Dan Etenberg (CEO) and Federico Brito (COO) expect to achieve it in 2024. But they have already launched in January the Zonda 1.0, the world’s first private rocket powered by biodiesel. And they received the first round of US$200,000.
EXPORT
Argentina’s leading role goes beyond putting equipment into orbit: new opportunities also arise, such as the provision of satellite services, a sub-sector that generated US$293 million in 2020.
In this sense, the SME Arsultra emerged in 2010 and is dedicated to designing and developing mission-critical (flight control and navigation) and industrial computers of high reliability for flight subsystems. They are suppliers of CONAE, VENG, and INVAP.
Juan Martín Semegone, its president, assures iProUP that “with national development, we can export high value-added technology. The local space industry is growing, and we have a great opportunity to sell to the world.”
“There is a lot of know-how, skilled people. SMEs must diversify: in other countries, they can focus on a specific product; here we have to look for several options to be profitable,” he says.
Semegone adds that “in 10 years, we have sold to private companies, especially in the United States, and we have had several projects with others from Italy and Mexico, among others.”
SPACESUR has been collaborating with CONAE for more than a decadItsits Geo Platform sys it provides digital transformation solutions for government and industry based on geospatial and Earth observation technologies. “We operate in Argentina and Spain and export to the US, Europe, and Latin America,” Alberto Pérez Cassinelli, CEO of the firm that started with seed funding by winning contests for entrepreneurs and public innovation programs as FONTAR, tells iProUP.
With 400 employees and extensive experience, VENG already sells services derived from SAOCOM satellites. José Luis Randazzo, its manager, tells iProUP that they are “in an initial stage of global commercialization. It represents the export of high added value, allowing to articulate actions with national companies and institutions to develop new products and services”.
In the case of INVAP, which invoiced an average of US$200 million per year during the last decade, half of its projects are for foreign countries. Locally, it obtained a contract for US$9.2 billion.
Martín Germán Fabris, ARSAT’s satellite services manager, warns that the country must go beyond nanosatellites since they have a shorter useful life, “we must see if the business is sustainable over time for the small companies. Now, they must be produced in the country.”
The outlook in Argentina is promising. “Much had to do with the enormous task of Conrado Varotto, one of the creators of INVAP and Executive and Technical Director of CONAE until 2018, who managed the funds to get to where we are,” explains Absi. He passed away last year, but his legacy is still alive: Argentina is today a major player in the new conquest of space.