Seraphim Space Investment Trust PLC (LSE:SSIT) flagged that its portfolio company D-Orbit launched its fifth mission today, aboard a SpaceX rocket.
Offering a last-mile delivery service for space, Italy-based D-Orbit's ION orbital transfer vehicle was successfully deployed at 1:50 PM EDT into a 500km Sun-synchronous orbit, it said, and will soon begin deploying satellites for customers as part of the 'Spacelust' mission.
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ION is designed both to precisely deploy satellites and perform technology demonstrations of third-party payloads in orbit, with its partners on the Spacelust mission being Kleos Space SA, satellites developed at the Space Exploration Laboratory (SPEL) and a hosted payload from Upmosphere
“The pace of our missions is growing fast, and we’re thrilled to add the fifth ION to the fleet of our vehicles that are already in orbit”, said Renato Panesi, D-Orbit’s chief commercial officer.
For Kleos, a space-powered radiofrequency reconnaissance data-as-a-service company, D-Orbit will deploy four satellites.
For SPEL, D-Orbit will deploy three additional satellites, developed by the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Mathematics (FCFM) at the University of Chile in collaboration with the University of Santiago de Chile, including PlantSat, which will study the growth of a plant in low Earth orbit in an environment that will replicate the conditions on the surface of Mars.
For Upmosphere, which offers its customers a chance to launch smaller mementos and memories of loved ones up into space, ION will carry a wooden box containing mementos from four different clients around the Earth for several years.
D-Orbit has four more ION launches scheduled for the second half of 2022, with the next mission scheduled for no earlier than June.