The Greater Seattle area is well known for the development of commercial aircraft, software and ubiquitous coffee chains, but less well known is our contribution to space, and in particular, satellites.
The space industry is not new to Seattle. Boeing has been involved since the early days of the space race, supporting NASA’s efforts from Apollo through the operation of the International Space Station. Thruster manufacturer Rocket Research Corporation (now the in-space propulsion division of Aerojet Rocketdyne) flew its first hardware as part of the Air Force’s OV2-1 satellite in 1965. Seattle area design firm Teague has also been creating spacecraft interiors for decades. Under the roar of commercial jet engines, our region has quietly contributed to the business of space with little fanfare or recognition.
Recently, the local space sector has taken off and is starting to command wider attention. According to the Puget Sound Regional Council, the number of space industry jobs in our region more than doubled between 2018 and 2022 from 6,221 to over 13,000. This growth has largely been driven by the rapid expansion of Blue Origin and its rocket manufacturing efforts down in the city of Kent.
Less well known, is the explosive growth in the production of satellites coming out of our region. As of the beginning of this 2022, nearly 40 percent of all active satellites in space were produced in the Greater Seattle area. Even more astonishing, our region was responsible for almost two-thirds of all the new satellites launched worldwide over the past two years.
Much of this is due to the massive numbers put up by SpaceX’s Starlink broadband constellation, which is manufactured in Redmond. Over 2,300 of these small satellites orbit the Earth as of this September, all launched since 2019. But other firms like satellite manufacturer LeoStella, located just two miles south of the Museum here in Tukwila, add to that number. Emerging players, including Xplore and Amazon’s project Kuiper will further add to the impact our region has in the years to come.
BlackSky satellites in production at LeoStella.
Credit: LeoStella
And it’s not just the physical satellites coming out of our area. Seattle hosts a whole ecosystem of satellite operators and other supporting technologies that is also flourishing. Space rideshare company Spaceflight helps small satellite, or smallsat, developers find room as secondary payloads on rockets. RBC Signals develops ground stations to communicate between the Earth and space. BlackSky operates over a dozen Earth observation satellites providing on-demand photos of our planet in about 90 minutes.
Seattle is arguably the satellite capital of the world.
The activity happening all around us here on Earth rides the wave of a significant shift in how we use satellites in space. Large, bespoke and extraordinarily expensive satellites that once launched to geostationary Earth orbit are giving way to larger groups of smallsats in much lower orbits. These low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations can range in size from a dozen like BlackSky’s Earth observation satellites to several thousand like Starlink’s broadband constellation and the proposed Kuiper constellation from Amazon.
Mass produced smallsats provide resilience to a constellation. If one bird malfunctions, the rest of the flock can still fly. Smaller size, mass production techniques and the ability to overcome a certain number of hardware failures are all helping to drive down the cost of launching and operating these satellites and opening new opportunities for how we use space.
Two of the most significant benefits felt here on Earth by these large LEO constellations are in the areas of communications and Earth observation. Satellite-based broadband internet holds tremendous potential to connect parts of our world which lack adequate ground-based connectivity.
This is particularly true for regions where establishing terrestrial internet connectivity might be impractical due to either political instability or impassible geography. In May [2022], Brazil signed an agreement to provide Starlink connectivity to rural communities, which eliminates the need to run cables deep into the Amazon basin. In Ukraine, over 11,000 Starlink ground-stations have kept the communication lines open for the forces defending against Russia’s invasion and allowed news of the ongoing struggle to reach the outside world.
Earth observation satellites have similar impact. When the war began in Ukraine, BlackSky diverted the orbit for two of its newest Tukwila-built satellites to pass regularly over the country. Images captured by these satellites revealed Russian troop movements and helped relief workers better allocate resources to different border crossings based on the number of refugees seen waiting at any given location.
Engineers dissect a cubesat under observation by Museum Senior Curator Matthew Burchette.
Credit: Sean Mobley/The Museum of Flight
The proliferation of these large satellite constellations is not without its drawbacks. Shortly after SpaceX began deploying Starlink, astronomers noticed bright streaks crossing their telescopes as trains of the smallsats zipped across their field of view, leaving them with pictures of the wrong sort of constellation. The astronomy community is working with SpaceX to reduce the impact of the new satellites on their work. The company has already taken steps to reduce the reflectivity of the satellites in order to mitigate their impact on observations.
Concerns about space traffic management have also increased with the numbers of satellites. Traveling at around 17,500 miles per hour, a collision between two satellites could produce dangerous clouds of orbital debris threatening the safety of other activity in space. Fortunately, these new constellations are close enough to the Earth that they’re naturally dragged back down over time.
In September, the Federal Communication Commission proposed a rule that would require satellite operators to deorbit any spacecraft in low Earth orbit within five years after the end of its mission. These mitigations, along with efforts to improve how we track objects in space are intended to help ensure the rapidly increasing number of satellites can continue to operate safely.
As our region continues to expand its contributions and drive new innovations in the use of satellites and space, The Museum of Flight is eager to help share that story. Earlier this year, we added our first cubesat to the collection, which was featured in an episode of Curator on the Loose on our Youtube channel. We are also developing an exhibit about the smallsat revolution, which will feature the cubesat and highlight some of the stories included in this article. In addition to the Pacific Northwest’s contribution to human exploration in space, we want to share why we claim the title “satellite capital of the world.”
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2022 issue of Aloft, The Museum of Flight's Member magazine.
Top image: Satellite imagery of the Museum from September 2022. Credit: BlackSky