Alba Orbital

Alba Orbital is a space company in Glasgow, Scotland, that builds PocketQube satellites and arranges launches for them. It also runs an environmental test house for space and other industries.

The company says it has launched 62 PocketQubes on 11 orbital missions. Launches use its flight-proven Albapod deployment system. Customers fly as part of an Alba cluster on SpaceX Falcon 9 and Rocket Lab Electron rockets. The company describes its aim as opening up access to space for smaller projects.

Its product range has several parts. Alba Launch puts a customer's own satellite into orbit. Unicorn-2 is a pico-satellite platform that lets customers fly their own in-space mission as a hosted payload. Night Lights is a plan for high resolution optical images of the Earth at night. The company also sells PocketQube deployers and hardware such as hinges.

Alba Orbital runs a test house in Glasgow. Its 30 kN, 3 axis vibration table covers sine and random vibration, resonance searches from 5 to 2800 Hz and mechanical shock up to 100 g. A thermal vacuum bakeout chamber reaches +125 degrees C at pressures below 1 x 10 to the power of minus 5 mbar. The chamber measures 600 mm on each side. Past test work includes spacecraft qualification, solar cells, optics, precision equipment, automotive parts and launch certification. Case studies cover SMART-IR, CAVU Aerospace, Spherical Systems and Craft Prospect.

For operations, Alba Connect offers fully autonomous ground station solutions that can be set up quickly. The company also has a mobile ground station for UHF and S-band links and a subscription communications service.

Customers named include the European Space Agency, TU Delft, Stanford University and Stara Space. Alba Orbital has offices in Glasgow, in Wilmington, Delaware, in the United States, and in Berlin, Germany.

Services

• PocketQube launch
• Albapod deployers
• Unicorn-2 hosted payloads
• Night Lights imaging
• Vibration testing
• Thermal vacuum bakeout testing
• Mobile ground station
• Alba Connect ground station service