Coincidently, after Albedo and STOKE, it’s our 3rd investment in a Space technology startup in the same month. Space technology is getting more popular now and we see more startups working hard to make it in the reach of businesses, educational institutions and researchers by bringing affordable and easier solutions in the Space market.
Alba Orbital has graduated from Y Combinator W21 batch founded by Tom Walkinshaw. They are offering plenty of products and services related to Space so let’s discuss few notable items one by one.
First of all, Alba Orbital is a satellite manufacturer. However, instead of building bigger and costly satellites, it builds smaller square shaped satellites weighing less than 1 kg. Generally, such a small satellite is called PocketQube however, Alba Orbital calls them Unicorns. You may check Unicorn-2, a satellite built by Alba Orbital. By now, Alba Orbital has launched 6 satellites into the space with the help of SpaceX and they plan to launch 9 more of them by June 2021.
Question is: What Alba Orbital will do by using these satellites?
Well, they plan to sell satellite Earth imagery to customers by allowing them to task their satellites. In fact, they are already taking pre-booking orders. Alba Orbital has less number of satellites in the space at the moment so they will queue all tasking requests from their customers who will get images on first come first serve basis. Alba Orbital would only charge 1$ per sq. km. for tasking its satellites and the image would cost around $3K.
When we talk about satellite images, Alba Orbital might sound similar to our another portfolio startup, Albedo however Alba Orbital is offering Earth images at night as a product called NightLights. Earth images definitely look beautiful at night however there is more to it. NASA and other research organizations use night images of Earth for researching environmental, social, economic and several other aspects of different regions of the world. Similarly, other organizations and businesses also make use of such images in different types of applications.
Well, whatever I have shared about Alba Orbital so far, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Alba Orbital is not just building satellites and selling Earth imagery but it’s also offering lots of Space related services to others. Alba Orbital has made several partnerships with other Space agencies and organizations to provide affordable broker services like licensing, launching and communicating with satellites.
If you have any inquiries about their products and services, feel free to contact them.