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StarSpec's team has demonstrated unprecedented success in full life-cycle development, implementation, and in-flight operations of low-lead, high-impact space-based solutions, which is making waves in new space applications.
StarSpec is proud to announce the commissioning of our new space technology site: Canada's first fully commercial suborbital and space-based assembly, manufacturing, and testing facility. Located in the Kitchener-Waterloo region, this facility will serve as a primary base for integration and real-time operations of StarSpec's large NASA-contracted suborbital payloads, as well as technology development and manufacturing of space-based imaging hardware for LEO SmallSats. From this facility, StarSpec also looks forward to the launch of its InspireSat product line, which will enable fast and at-scale access to critical components used for high-res Earth-imaging satellites in support of emerging critical infrastructure, surveillance, and climate monitoring application.
More updates on tooling up our new facility coming soon - stay tuned!
StarSpec is pleased to announce the successful completion of Year 1 for NASA's EXCITE project! This state-of-the-art payload is designed to have the same imaging stability as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in order to be able to perform detailed analyses of exoplanet atmospheres that could possibly be very similar to Earth. Set to for integration to begin at NASA in Spring of 2023, EXCITE will launch it's first Test Flight in Fall 2023 with the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) from Ft. Sumner, NM. After successful recovery, EXCITE is queued to launch from McMurdo, Antarctica in Winter 2024 on a football-stadium sized balloon capable of lifting all 3000 lbs of scientific hardware into the stratosphere at three times higher than a typical jet (40 km altitude), during which StarSpec systems will allow EXCITE to collect highly precise exoplanet data.
Click below, to get a sneak peak at some of operational behind-the-scenes capabilities:
StarSpec is celebrating an amazing press release from one of our core founding projects, SuperBIT - the Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope! Based on and supported by StarSpec's core suborbital technology, SuperBIT is looking to fly on NASA's super-pressure balloon system from Wanaka, New Zealand with imaging capabilities rivaling the famous Hubble Space Telescope. Click below to learn more about how StarSpec is enabling projects like SuperBIT to realize space-based capabilities faster, cheaper, and more effectively.
StarSpec has passed a critical milestone in securing sole-source status with a new high-profile sub-orbital project out of NASA Goddard. This milestone vets StarSpec's space-based technologies and solutions as the most viable compared to other traditional commercial vendors on the basis of cost, timeline, and overall performance capabilities. More news to come on StarSpec's support of this high profile NASA project!
StarSpec is thrilled to be featured in Betakit's cover piece on how our technology is shaping the way future "new space" applications are approaching space. Click below to read the full article.
In addition to breaking ground on NASA's EXCITE project, StarSpec has been officially contracted to join a second high-profile NASA-led project as part of the 2021 NASA Pioneers program. StarSpec's primary role on this project (official details to be released) will be the design, fabrication, integration, and in-field operational support for a first-of-its-kind suborbital platform to be launched and operated from McMurdo, Antarctica as early as 2025 and Kiruna, Sweden in the following year. Though in the early stages of development, this project promises to not only be a welcome engineering challenge for the StarSpec team, but an incredible opportunity to strengthen ties with technology development leaders and science innovators at NASA and research institutions across North America.
We have hit the ground running in the first month of 2021, completing critical development for the AVIN project—a partnership with Aposys to develop high-definition three-dimensional maps for self driving car applications. StarSpec and Aposys hope to continue development of this project, fusing StarSpec satellite imagery with data collected from AVIN to develop the necessary mapping infrastructure for fully autonomous self driving car applications in urban and suburban environments. More updates on this exciting project and more to come soon!
Click here for a sneak peak.
StarSpec is finishing off a busy year having received an incredible amount of interest from research and technology development groups across North America. With nearly half a dozen high-value commitments from academic institutions and high-profile research groups at NASA, StarSpec is looking forward to providing suborbital gondola hardware and software for a broad spectrum of scientific diversity, from exoplanet atmospheres to observing intricate properties of the galactic interstellar medium to probing the fundamental mechanisms of the universe itself. We are excited to break ground and provide StarSpec technology and expertise to enable exploration of these new frontiers starting as early as Spring 2021.
StarSpec Technologies has been contracted to take part in a critical design study for a state-of-the-art suborbital gondola as part of NASA's new Pioneers program. As part of an ongoing partnership with academic institutions across Canada and the United States, StarSpec's primary role on this project (details to be released) will be to design, manufacture and integrate the primary gondola pointing and scanning system while providing critical in-field operational support and training throughout and up to the project's at-float commissioning stage. When funded, this multi-institutional project will be the first-of-its kind balloon-based remote research facility to be launched via NASA's Super-Pressure Balloon capabilities out of Wanaka, New Zealand as early as Spring 2025.
We are excited to announce that StarSpec is part of the winning EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope (EXCITE) proposal team, headed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. StarSpec will develop, construct, and integrate the suborbital balloon-borne platform for the project. Based on the high-precision telescope and image stabilization systems developed by our core team, StarSpec will enable EXCITE to make spectrographic measurements of planets outside our solar system (exoplanets) with unparalleled accuracy and precision. Scheduled to launch from McMurdo, Antarctica in 2025 to near-space via a football-stadium-sized balloon as part of NASA's Long Duration Balloon program, the EXCITE project aims to use these high fidelity measurements to better understand the atmospheric content of these exoplanets at a level not achievable with current ground, sub-orbital, or space-based instrumentation.