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Satellite startupAlbedoaims to provide commercial orbital imagery so detailed that the military machine kept its own interpretation under wraps — until it was leak a few year ago by Donald Trump .
In 2019 , then - President of the United States Trump tweet a elaborate simulacrum of a heavy damaged Iranian launch launchpad captured by a classified military orbiter . The image , which was declassified in 2022 , revealed what many in the commercial Earth observation industry suspect : that U.S. defense had the power to capture epitome at a hugely incisive 10 - centimeter resolution .
“ When Trump tweeted a classified satellite image a few year ago that showed that we could capture 10 - centimetre resolution from space , it sparked all this conversation in the commercial industry on how game - alter it would be to have that resolution commercially , ” Albedo ’s co - founder and CEO Topher Haddad said in a late interview . “ I stumbled upon that conversation a while after it come about and basically could n’t get it out of my mind . ”
At the time , Haddad was working on classified remote sensing satellites for the U.S. government at Lockheed Martin . A yr later , Haddad teamed up with fellow Lockheed veteran AyJay Lasater and engineer Winston Tri to foundAlbedo , a company that ’s aiming to do the unacceptable and deport 10 - centimeter solution optical images to commercial customers at historically low cost .
( A 10 - centimeter resolution fundamentally means that each picture element in an simulacrum encompass an area the sizing of 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters on the ground . In comparison , the biggest optical imagery provider today collect image at a 30 - cm answer , which is algorithmically ameliorate to 15 centimeters . )
Such low resolving power , at a terms the marketplace will bear , is a big ask : The military satellites like the one that conquer the image of the Iranian launch pad are widely believe to cost billions of one dollar bill each . But Denver - found Albedo says it will be able to drive price fashion , way down — not through large innovations on the eye side , but through its planet bus platform that mesh in very low Earth orbit ( VLEO ) . That “ is where the VLEO engineering science lives , ” Haddad suppose .
Instead of connect all the other Earth observation player and operating in low Earth eye socket ( LEO ) , the orbital band around Earth at an altitude of around 2,000 kilometers , Albedo is targeting the lesser - known ( but aptly - named ) VLEO that ’s between 250 and 450 km . Albedo , which is almost entirely vertically desegregate , has design a artificial satellite bus that is amply optimized for this surround : from the guidance , pilotage and control ( GNC ) organization ; the robotics and software used to rapidly repoint the planet and ensure image are n’t blurry ; the solar arrays ; and the mission provision and concept of operations to check that each satellite stays on orbit for an norm of four years .
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This last detail is primal . While there are some upsides to operating in VLEO , like the fact that it ’s less crowded and more protected from radiation , objects in that orbit are open to a great amount of atmospherical drag , since they are closemouthed to Earth . But passably unintuitively , Albedo ’s satellite avoid this issue by being very dumb and wakeless , and by using an efficient galvanizing actuation system to counter the retarding force .
The biggest proficient challenges , Haddad say , are in reality in the robotics , control and attitude systems :
“ There ’s three class : there ’s stability , which is making sure your picture is n’t fuzzy . There ’s agility , so being able to rapidly point at different mark that you ’re trying to picture as you ’re passing over very quickly . . . And then there ’s truth , have intercourse exactly where you ’re bespeak , which is related to [ stability and agility ] and also gives you that geolocation metric that certain customer manage a lot about , ” Haddad explain .
“ All those things at 10 - centimeter settlement are just inherently very hard , because the angle from a single pixel is littler than it would be for a 30 - centimeter or 50 - centimeter or three - meter . So any specific disturbance is run to impact the 10 - centimeter pixel much more than a 30 - centimeter pixel . Then you take that and you vanish in VLEO , where the satellites are moving even quicker around the Earth , there ’s torque from the atmosphere , all those things just amaze an even harder challenge for GNC . ”
investor have rallied behind the company ’s vision . In September 2022 , a little less than a year after completing Y Combinator , Albedo announced it had levy a $ 48 million Series A stave . Now the company says it has closed $ 35 million in Series A-1 funding , at an up - round evaluation .
The exercise case abound , from commercial to defense . Reflecting the dual - utilization nature of VLEO technical school , Albedo ’s investors include funds like Bill Gates ’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures to defense technical school - focused Shield Capital . This latest tranche was led by Standard Investments , the investment arm of industrial giant Standard Industries . New investors Booz Allen Ventures , Cubit Capital , and Bill Perkins also participated in this round , along with existing investors ( like Breakthrough and Shield ) , as well as Initialized Capital , Y Combinator , Giant Step Capital , Republic Capital , and others . With this latest capital , the company ’s raised $ 97 million to date .
decently now , Albedo is working toward launch of its first commercial-grade satellite in the first half of 2025 . Haddad declined to specialize a timeline beyond that date but say that the company ’s next goal would be to plunge a block of six satellites that would cater a daily global revisit pace , and finally a full 24 - bird configuration that would offer five revisits per daylight .
