Leaf Space has taken the advantage of the upcoming CubeSat Workshop in San Luis Obispo to announce an important step forward in streamlining the process of radio integrations in its Ground Segment infrastructure and services. The choice of finalizing the pre-integration of a group of radio systems is strategic to develop Leaf Line and Leaf Key in such a way to offer a ready-to-use service, improving its commercial value.

Pre-integration of radios installed on-board small satellites avoids repeating part of the necessary integration process to provide a telecommunications service each time a customer chooses Leaf Space services. As a result, service deployment time is reduced and upfront costs are minimized.

Following a detailed market analysis, Leaf Space has decided to kick-off its pre-integration program by completing the integration process of the radios included in Table 1.

Table 1

The bundle available for purchase will include an integration service free of charge and 10 free familiarization passages as a first approach to our Leaf Line network and one of the following service packets at a discounted and very competitive price:

1. Limited: 150 passes included at 2’500 €;
2. Standard: 200 passes included at 3’200 €;
3. Extended: 250 passes included at 3’800 €.

Based on the communication requirements of the user:

• Downlink Only: if operations imply only downlink, the start of the service is immediate and without any additional fee;
• TT&C: if TT&C is necessary, start of the service will be effective also for the uplink (downlink operations are still immediate) when the license is granted. The fee to cover licensing costs are based on the number of ground stations used for the service at 150€ per month per GS.

Once all the passages included in the packet are used, the user of the service can continue using our Leaf Line based on a standard pricing per pass for an unlimited time, with no service interruptions or modifications and without any kind of further integration procedures.

The long-term goal is to continue integration of several other small satellite radios in order to extend the pre-integration offer’s portfolio and create even more opportunities for operators or users.

Keen to expand our free-integration service we are providing a 50% discount on integration fees for service requests received within 30th June 2019, from customers having different radios than the pre-integrated ones.

Leaf Space and Astrocast announced an agreement for Astrocast’s use of Leaf Space ground stations. The agreement calls for up to 12 antennas to support the Astrocast IoT network, a 64-unit nanosatellite constellation, which is scheduled to be launched in phases. The antennas included in the agreement will be built and operated by Leaf Space and will be strategically located across six locations, providing dedicated service solely to Astrocast and its worldwide customers.
This new ground segment solution, named Leaf Key, has been developed by Leaf Space to address high capacity and high efficiency missions, as Astrocast’s constellation. The Leaf Space agreement provides Astrocast with the use of additional antennas each time the Swiss-based IoT provider launches a new plane of satellites. The roll-out of Leaf Space antennas will align with the constellation deployment phases.

The Astrocast IoT and machine-to-machine communications network will provide cost effective services to customers spanning key global industries worldwide. Coverage will span 90 percent of the globe not currently serviced by existing cellular systems. The constellation will consist of eight orbital planes, each encompassing eight operational spacecrafts along with two spare satellites. Astrocast is going to launch the first two demonstration satellites in Q4 2018 and has already booked the launch for the first two orbital planes for Q3 and Q4 2019, each encompassing eight operational spacecrafts along with two spare satellites. Leaf Space will provide the ground segment service for the entire constellation, through a multi- year agreement.

“We worked really close with the Astrocast team to develop a service able to reduce the ground segment to a predictable recurring cost even for such a big constellation,” said Giovanni Pandolfi Bortoletto, co- founder and CTO of Leaf Space. “Leaf Key is a flexible and scalable system that follows step by step the constellation deployment, providing the right performance at the right time.”

“We are pleased to engage Leaf Space for ground communication services,” said Fabien Jordan, co- founder and CEO of Astrocast. “With the ability to develop and operate dedicated antennas, and to scale alongside our network, Leaf Space is the right partner for us.”

“There are numerous businesses operating remotely which simply don’t have access to key IoT capabilities because those services don’t currently exist in those regions,” added Jordan. “The Astrocast network will be a game changer for these enterprises and Leaf Space’s ground station capabilities will be a key component of our solution.”

“This is the first time a single ground segment provider has been awarded to support a full-deployment nanosat constellation,” said Jonata Puglia, co-founder and CEO of Leaf Space. “It’s exciting to see space
startups like ours working closely together to achieve their goals. This is a clear sign that the smallsat market is consolidating and entering its mature stage.”

2018 is off to a flying start for us. Leaf Space has been rewarded with 1.3 Million Euro that will help the team to develop Leaf Line with high quality and no-stop research, internationalize the business and, of course, increase the number of Ground Stations around the world.

This funding will allow us to deliver a better service for our current and future customers, resulting in more visibility windows for the satellites and lower data delivery latency.

We are thrilled that our score has been the highest among more than 600 European projects. It’s definitely great to see our strategy recognized as solid, both on a technical and business point of view.

If you are part of a university, a research center or a non-profit organization you are eligible to apply. Send us a presentation of your project highlighting why we should choose your mission.

We owe a lot to the scientific community and we hope this can be our way to pay back.

Send us a mail to contest@leaf.space

Among other software products and services, Solenix develops and offers Elveti, a lightweight, flight-proven mission control system for decoding and visualising telemetry data from satellites as well as generating telecommands. Leaf Space, on the other hand, operates Leaf Line, a ground segment as a service capable of bringing satellite data to ground with low latency.

In this context, both companies are committed to delivering services tailored to nano, micro and small satellites, in terms of affordability and ease of use. The combination of Elveti and Leaf Line will allow satellite operators to perform their daily activities more easily and with consistent effort savings, by getting their data from the Leaf Life service directly into the Elveti software.

“We believe Elveti is a great plus for Leaf Line: all the operators who are not willing to develop their own mission control software connected to our API, will have the option to simply choose Elveti, taking advantage of a proven technology that is being improved continuously ” says Giovanni Pandolfi, CTO of Leaf Space.
“Leaf Space’s services are an ideal complement to Elveti, bridging the gap between our mission control system and the satellites of our customers. The combination of both will truly let our customers focus on their space assets and added value.” says Yann Voumard, Head of Products at Solenix.

visit Solenix website for more!

Smart and Start purpose is to sustain the development of new companies supporting the acquisition of machinery, instrumentation other than current expenditure such as salaries and rents. Leaf Space has obtained in total about 500 k$.