orbitworks

Orbitworks designs, builds and operates satellites in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. It calls itself the Middle East's first satellite manufacturing hub. Its aim is to make access to space faster, simpler and more sovereign, using AI enabled satellites.

The company says it is building local capacity for integration, testing and mission operations in the UAE. This supports defence, civil and commercial space missions from within the region. It states that the time from contract to orbit is under two months.

Its flagship project is Altair, an AI enabled Earth observation constellation built in Abu Dhabi. Altair combines several types of sensor with onboard processing, so raw data can become useful output within minutes. The first satellite, Altair-1, launched from Vandenberg in California and separated from a Falcon 9 rocket on 1 October.

Orbitworks offers four ways to reach orbit. Physical missions cover dedicated spacecraft and hosted payloads. The customer brings a payload, and the company handles the platform, integration, launch and operations. Virtual missions let customers deploy software to onboard compute and multi sensor systems without building satellite hardware. On demand missions give access to sensing, data and connectivity from infrastructure already in orbit. Assembly, integration and testing takes spacecraft systems, payloads and subsystems through a controlled path before launch.

The company's technology includes a payload adapter that supports missions with any bus or payload type. This allows several payloads on one satellite and cuts non-recurring engineering. It also offers multi-sensor fusion and edge computing in orbit. Cockpit is its secure, web-based mission control platform. Customers use it to task payloads, monitor them and run missions, and it supports testing in the cloud before deployment.

Orbitworks serves three groups. Defence work includes persistent intelligence, detection of radio interference and jamming, and border and maritime monitoring. Civil work includes disaster response, environmental and land monitoring, and national infrastructure oversight. Commercial work includes asset and site monitoring, supply chain and route visibility, and forecasting and data services.

The company runs a purpose-built facility of 50,000 square feet in Abu Dhabi. It includes a 15,000 square foot ISO class cleanroom and full environmental and functional test infrastructure for spacecraft up to 500 kg.

Services

• Physical missions
• Virtual missions
• On demand missions
• Assembly, integration and testing
• Altair Earth observation data
• Cockpit mission control software
• Payload integration
• Spacecraft testing