Hampshire's In-Space Missions awarded UK Space Agency funding to advance Faraday Dragon concept
Hampshire-based In-Space Missions has been awarded a grant from the UK Space Agency’s International Bi-lateral Fund to develop its Faraday Dragon mission concept.
Faraday Dragon is the first Asia-Pacific regional and multi-agency technology and business accelerator programme created to provide regular rideshare missions - where multiple customers share one satellite.
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The matched fund grant will enable all concerned towards the design, build and launch in 2026 of the first in a series of missions.
Alton-based In-Space Missions, a wholly owned subsidiary of BAE Systems, launched the concept for Faraday Dragon at the Global Space Technology Forum in Singapore in February this year and there have been various discussions and workshops with government bodies, space agencies, commercial organisations and academia in the region.
Doug Liddle, CEO of In-Space Missions, said: "With the Asia-Pacific region being a current focus of UK space export growth, In-Space Missions is thrilled to be leading this bold endeavour to unlock low-cost, predictable space flight and increase technology readiness levels for novel and innovative technologies from the region.
"Our Faraday Rideshare programmes, where multiple customers share one satellite platform, is a more sustainable way to do space missions and we are committed to limiting space debris in this way and supporting the sustainability aims of the UK Space Agency."
In-Space Missions said discussions with organisations from Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and Taiwan had already identified mutual areas of interest for the first mission including agricultural monitoring, low-cost and accessible connectivity, radio frequency observation and disaster monitoring.
The UK is currently leading the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters and it is also proposed that that earth observation payloads on Faraday Dragon will contribute to the global benefit of the Charter in the future.
The Faraday Dragon spacecraft offers small satellite performance, carrying up to 60kg of payload and a payload power up to 200W, along with 1 TByte of data storage, a high-rate downlink and a mission lifetime of five years or more.
Collaboration on the mission means there is an opportunity for sharing data along with knowledge, experience and training, said In-Space Missions.
A series of Faraday Dragon workshops are being held in the Asia-Pacific region throughout August and September aimed at identifying the key payload technologies, advancing the mission architecture and developing the collaboration framework.
Final down selection of the payloads is expected to be made by the end of the year.
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