Alba Orbital announce a record breaking launch campaign of 20 PocketQube satellites in Q4 2021.

Alba Orbital’s pico-satellite cluster of 20 PocketQubes will launch aboard Rocket Lab & SpaceX launch vehicles as soon as November 2021. 

July XX, 2021 -- Glasgow, UK -- Alba Orbital, pioneering PocketQube manufacturer, today announced a record breaking launch campaign of twenty PocketQubes as part of Alba Cluster X, 3 and 4 via Rocket Lab & SpaceX launch vehicles in Q4 2021.

Alba’s upcoming flights are set to break the world record for most PocketQubes deployed in-orbit; a record previously set by the company in December 2019 after their successful maiden launch which deployed six PocketQubes in orbit from New Zealand. 

‘Alba Cluster X’ will deliver four PocketQube pico-satellites to orbit as early as November 2021 via Rocket Lab’s ‘Electron’ launch vehicle, and ‘Alba Cluster 3 & 4’ will launch a further sixteen PocketQubes on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December 2021. 

PocketQubes are tiny satellites small enough to fit in your pocket. They are composed of 5cm cubes per unit, or ‘P’, and can cost as little as 25K Euro to launch to orbit. Example of a ‘1P’ (top right) and a ‘2P’ is shown above, and a ‘3P’ is shown below (bottom left).

‘Alba Cluster X’ includes four of these spacecraft: three developed by MyRadar (USA) for weather applications, as well as Alba Orbital’s flagship earth imaging pico-satellite named ‘Unicorn-2A’ designed to designed to monitor artificial light at night (ALAN).

Satellite imagery of the earth at night, otherwise known as “night lights'', provides a timely and spatially explicit measure of human activities enabling a host of applications such as tracking urbanization and socioeconomic dynamics, evaluating armed conflicts and disasters, investigating fisheries, assessing greenhouse gas emissions and energy use, and analysing light pollution and health effects. 

The spacecraft manifested for the Alba launch campaign come from a total of eight different countries, including pico-satellites developed by Innova Space (Argentina), TU Delft (Netherlands) & Ariel University (Israel). 

The December flight also marks an important milestone for Turkey & Brazil’s newspace sector, as the respective countries will be launching their first pico-satellites to orbit developed by Brazilian start-up, PION Labs, and Turkish student team, Grizu-263. 

Tom Walkinshaw, CEO/Founder Alba Orbital Limited said:

‘This a huge milestone for Alba and the Scottish space sector. This flight doubles the number of PocketQubes ever flown to orbit and puts Scotland at the forefront of Space Access Democratisation for nations worldwide, with Alba Orbital leading the charge in the new smallsat revolution’.

UK Trade, Investment and Innovation Minister Ivan McKee said:

 “This is fantastic news for Alba Orbital and the whole space sector in Scotland.  It once again demonstrates Scotland’s world leading capabilities in providing affordable access to space and the critical role that the sector is playing in the fight against climate change. Space is a focus for global partnership and cooperation - increasingly, Scotland is at the heart of that process.”

All satellites will be deployed into their target orbit in Q4 2021 using Alba Orbital’s ‘AlbaPod’ deployment system, which achieved flight heritage in December 2019 after the successful launch of six PocketQubes aboard Rocket Lab’s ‘Electron’ launch vehicle.

Limited slots for Cluster 5 (Q1 2022) and Cluster 6 (Q2 2022) are available, with prices starting from 25k euro for a 1P PocketQube launch slot. Alba Orbital provides the lowest price to launch a satellite to orbit on a reliable flight proven launch system. For more information on procuring and launching your own satellite, please visit www.albaorbital.com/launch or get in touch at contact@albaorbital.com.