As part of SpaceX’s rideshare program, a U.K. space business has disclosed plans to launch its first satellite, ushering in what it calls a “new era of space research,” in which astronomy data is gathered, packaged, and sold “as a service.”
SpaceX’s Transporter 15 program, scheduled for launch in October 2025, will employ a Falcon 9 rocket, as in previous missions, to carry payloads from outside businesses into orbit. Blue Skies Space, based in London, has disclosed that its first Mauve satellite will be among the payloads transported into orbit.
The satellite will be dedicated to stellar spectroscopy, or the spectrum of light emitted by stars, which can transmit information such as star composition, temperature, density, mass, distance, luminosity, and more. It is intended to supplement data provided by current astronomical efforts, such as that of the renowned Hubble Telescope.
Blue Skies Space CEO and co-founder Marcell Tessenyi told that “Mauve is designed for long observation campaigns of hundreds of stars in our galaxy, which will help the science community in progressing key research on stars,”
The research of star flares, including their frequency, energy distribution, and physical characteristics, is one of the suggested scientific use cases. The mandate may also involve the investigation of the magnetic activity of planetary hosts to uncover the impacts of UV radiation on photochemistry.
While there are other commercial businesses that collect and profit from space data, most of them are either satellites that provide Earth observation data or ground-based telescopes that observe deep space. By collecting data about space from space and making it easily accessible through a membership model based on subscriptions, Blue Skies is setting itself apart. Researchers from Boston University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan are already involved in this program; they signed up before launch to contribute to program design considerations, such as where and how long the Mauve satellite should be looking in orbit.
“No private company is providing astronomy data as a service; we will be the first,” declared Tessenyi. “We bring new science satellites and datasets to the community and make this available to anyone who wants to join. This new approach really gives the science community greater agility and complements the large, high-capability and high-demand facilities typically delivered by government agencies.”
Since its founding, the firm has raised around $6.5 million in total, with about two thirds coming from equity investments from a small group of investors, including Japan’s Sparx Group and the U.K. venture fund SFC Capital. Grants, notably money from Europe’s Horizon R&D program, have made up the remaining amount.
Commercialize the Cosmos
Blue Skies Space was established in 2014 by a group of scholars, one of whom is Tessenyi, who holds a doctorate in astrophysics from University College London (UCL). The firm has had to endure what Tessenyi refers to as the “standard mission proposal processes” with the typical space agencies before it could finally turn heads. But the emergence of the so-called “new space” industry, which is defined by private enterprises making space travel commercial, is creating new prospects for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
“We spent many years engaging with the global science community, validating our model and better understanding their science and data needs,” Tessenyi stated. “A lot has happened within the business to enable the launch of the Mauve, but also ‘new space’ drastically transformed the space ecosystem over the past 10 years, during which we have been able to find the right manufacturing partners and team members to implement our vision.”
Blue Skies chose to outsource the engineering work to more seasoned manufacturers, such as C3S in Hungary and Isispace in the Netherlands, rather than creating its own satellites. Blue Skies was responsible for defining the scientific needs and translating them into technical specifications. This comes with a UV-visible spectrometer and a 13 cm telescope.
In parallel, Blue Skies is working on Twinkle, a second satellite that Airbus will build. This will especially focus on spectroscopic observations of the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. It will pack a bigger telescope and visible-IR spectrometer, connected to a Teledyne sensor.
Blue Skies has simply stated that it will make the cost of its membership known “soon.” It has not disclosed the cost of its membership.
Blue Skies is still a rather lean company, with only 12 staff headquartered in the UK and Italy, despite its funding and aspirations to launch a real satellite into space.
