TAMPA, Fla. — Spire Global is adopting Portuguese software startup Neuraspace’s space traffic management (STM) services for the more than 100 small satellites it operates across low Earth orbit.
Neuraspace CEO Chiara Manfletti announced April 8 that a large portion of the Vienna, Virginia-based operator’s fleet will use the platform’s premium service, which includes satellite management analysis and collision avoidance maneuver suggestions.
The rest of the satellites will use a free service the four-year-old venture recently rolled out to give operators a common view of conjunction alerts. The service includes chat windows that automatically open between operators to discuss how best to navigate a collision risk.
Most of the cubesats in Spire’s fleet support its own maritime, aviation, and weather services, but the company also has spacecraft it builds and operates for customers as part of its space-as-a-service business. Some of the services for these customers may not include STM, and the automation of collision avoidance maneuvers is also not always required for satellites lacking onboard propulsion.
Spire is the first new customer Neuraspace has announced for its premium tier since the venture split its offering into a paid and free service in March.
Customers who had signed up to the platform since its commercial debut in 2022 were automatically transferred to the premium tier, which before Spire covered operators responsible for more than 250 satellites in orbit.
About 70% of Neuraspace customers are currently on the premium tier and the remaining 30% are on the free service, Manfletti told SpaceNews, highlighting strong adoption of the basic tier to build out its ecosystem.
Spire also offers its customers a web-based app promising to simplify satellite constellation operations and data delivery.
“With the STM platform from Neuraspace, we can customize monitoring and analysis data, providing timely collision information,” Vincent Furia, senior director of constellation planning and operations at Spire, said in a statement.
“As our constellation expands and orbit congestion grows, Neuraspace’s AI-powered STM reduces human screening, preserving fuel and enables more efficient operations.”
Neuraspace’s platform currently draws from data gathered from public sources and partnerships with ground telescope providers.
The venture has plans to use satellite sensors Belgium’s Arcsec is developing that, in addition to tracking stars to help keep spacecraft pointing in the right direction, would monitor debris too small to detect from the ground.
Meanwhile, Spire is under contract to build an initial 12 space situational awareness cubesats for Canada’s NorthStar Earth and Space, which is seeking to track objects from space across low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit to improve STM models.
Rocket Lab launched the first four of these satellites at the end of January, each the size of a 16-unit (16U) cubesat.
A standard cubesat measures 10 centimeters a side. Most of the satellites in Spire’s fleet are 3U.
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