Exodus Orbitals, a business that creates software which enables clients to upload and run apps from space, is in talks to lease satellites after delaying its launch by seven months until October 2022. As per Exodus Orbitals CEO and founder Dennis Silin, the firm is changing its approach to speed up the start of the commercial activities as it tries to generate its first investment round.
“The launch delay is unrelated to our financial situation,” Silin explained. “Our mission service provider informed us of a launch date change, and while this has no bearing on our plans, we will need to alter them for a different date.”
Silin, who is a software developer who started Exodus Orbitals in Canada 15 years ago as a first-generation immigrant, said his team took its first cross-border trip to Silicon Valley in early October to engage potential investors. The company is looking for $1.5 million in funds to deploy the very first satellite and expand its operations, which comprise leasing space on the other smallsats.
“Some satellite operators can currently allow third-party software apps on their existing satellites in orbit without any additional hardware modifications,” Silin told SpaceNews. “Other satellite providers we’ve spoken to say that their next generation of the satellites, due to launch in the coming years, will enable this kind of operations.”
In June, the Canadian company firm that it had successfully flight-tested the computer code required to operate its open platform on the OPS-SAT, an ESA cubesat that serves as an on-orbit trial bed for sophisticated software-driven capabilities. Software-defined satellites, unlike traditional “bent pipe” spacecraft, maybe reprogrammed in orbit, giving operators the versatility to respond to changes in demand and opening up new business strategies like Exodus Orbitals’ “AppStore in Space.”
According to Silin, providing clients with an in-orbit platform for software flight testing and validation is an “instant business case” for the endeavor. However, he believes that allowing software developers all across the world to design apps that can operate directly on the satellite’s onboard computer will provide a bigger financial opportunity.
Exodus Orbitals has selected an unknown U.S. partner, and a launch supplier, to create a satellite that broadens OPS-capabilities SAT’s for the commercial sector. Even though the ESA spacecraft is smaller compared to the spacecraft Exodus Orbitals is proposing, Silin claims it can host “hundreds of different software applications,” including 10-20 he feels have urgent commercial potential. Everything from identifying space debris to the data compression and error correction processes is covered.
“We hope to deliver better equipment than available on [ESA’s OPS-SAT] mission even with our initial mission,” he stated. Silin said the business’s production contract is “on hold” until the current funding round is completed, and the company is also deferring leasing a spacecraft until it has raised at least some new funds.
