Aria Alamalhodaei has an interesting scoop on an issue with Capella Spaces’s SAR constellation:
In a statement to TechCrunch, Capella CEO Payam Banazadeh confirmed that some of the satellites have been deorbiting faster than expected “due to the combination of increased drag due to much higher solar activity than predicted by NOAA and less than expected performance from our 3rd party propulsion system.”
“We have upgraded our propulsion system on all future satellites to account for these facts, including the launch of our next generation satellite Acadia-1, currently scheduled for launch on August 5th 2023. We plan to launch eight of our next generation Acadia satellites over the next 12 months,” he added.
It’s good to know they have had the issue identified and addressed before tomorrow’s launch with Rocket Lab.