Celestial

Project description

Celestial develops telecommunication hard- and software. Specific products offered are a communication system and patch antenna for small satellites. This antenna is also the basis for a GNSS terminal (navigation) and a Phased Array Antenna (PAA) used in mobility applications and ground stations.

Issue addressed by the project

The failure rate of academic CubeSat missions alone is 48 %. On average, only 1 year of lifetime can be expected for a CubeSat. The high mission failure rates resulted in commercially lost assets of 170 M EUR. Concerning CubeSats, 70% are de-orbited while they are still operational. In fact, the fuel dedicated towards de-orbiting can be up to 20 % of the total mass of the satellite. The high de-orbiting rates resulted in commercially lost assets of 250 M EUR. Celestial is developing a small satellite communication system and patch antenna. They enable the satellites to send telemetry, telecommand, and observation data to ground stations and receive commands. Celestial offers off-the-shelf communication and patch antenna for small satellites. However, the primary offering is a custom engineering service. Celestail will tailor the systems to mission characteristics of the customer. This is a common industry approach and technically necessary. The systems can be offered individually or combined.

Solution(s) brought by the project

• Investment
• Validation from small satellite companies
• Validation from academic space missions

Project need(s)

• Luxembourg based ecosystem / partners