Alba Orbital

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Alba Orbital, is a British company building PocketQube satellites. Alba Orbital is the developer and manufacturer of the Unicorn-1 and Unicorn-2 satellite platforms.

The company holds contracts with the European Space Agency. ^[1]

Overview[]

Alba Orbital builds and designs spacecraft and consults with those building small satellites. Its Unicorn-1 platform is a 1P picosatellite, and is about the size of a can of Irn-Bru, while its slightly larger Unicorn-2 platform is a 2P satellite that is about the size of a bottle of the same ^[2]

Launches[]

Alba Orbital is a launch broker^{[citation needed]}, and in the last year^[when?] it has announced partnerships with several space companies, including Vector and Rocket Lab, in order to send PocketQube satellites into space. These launches harbor clusters^[3] containing space for PocketQubes that is sold to teams wanting to send a pod along. The first launch had room for 6P worth of PocketQubes, and the second launch will have room for 12P.^[4] There are three launches planned for 2020 and onward, with partnerships and pod owners not yet known. The first of these future launches will have room for 18P, while the final two will have room for 96P. All Alba Orbital launches use Albapod deployers in order to release the clusters. These deployers come in two sizes: 6P and 96P. Due to demand for pod space, Alba Orbital has a waiting list. If demand is high enough, launches will increase in size in order to account for those on the waiting list. ^{[5] [6]}

The first launch that Alba Orbital brokered took place 6 December 2019 by an Electron rocket. The launch orbited the Alba Cluster 2 of six PocketQubes. The satellites put on orbit were called: SMOG-P, ATL-1, FossaSat-1, Noor 1a (Unicorn-2b), Noor 1b (Unicorn-2c) and TRSI. For more information see PocketQube#Launched.

See also[]

• PocketQube – The satellite format Alba Orbital specialize in building

References[]

External links[]

• Company website