SpaceFab

Update from SpaceFab.US, January 30, 2018

founder @ SpaceFab

Published on Jan 31, 2018

We want to thank our investors, customers, and supporters of our Waypoint space telescope for combined astronomy and ground observation.  We really appreciate your support!  


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SpaceFab.US co-founder Sean League at AAS-231

We displayed the latest model of the Waypoint space telescope at our booth, and showed it to many professional astronomers at AAS-231. We got very positive feedback from astronomers, researchers, and engineers from MIT, NASA, and many other institutions.

We were especially pleased by the feedback from satellite engineers who were impressed with all the functionality we were able to put into our 12U cubesat, functionality that ordinarily needs a satellite two to three times larger and at least two to three times more expensive. We had a number of researchers who expressed interest in using the Waypoint spacecraft bus for their own instruments and experiments, so we have already started thinking about how we satisfy this market opportunity.

We now have data on what kind of research our space telescope would be used for by astronomers.  There is a wide variety in the types of observation, which shows the versatility of our Waypoint space telescope.


Top types of observation

  • Exoplanet follow-up
  • Eclipsing binaries
  • Gravity wave follow-up
  • Cosmology
  • Beautiful pictures


Top observation time categories

  • Cosmology
  • Supernovae
  • Eclipsing binaries
  • Earth observation
  • Interstellar medium


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We had a daily raffle for observation time on our Waypoint space telescope, as well as a chance for a space selfie.  

Congratulations to the winners of five minutes of observation time.
  • PD at Optics & Photonics
  • AK at University of Wyoming
  • SL at Hofstra University
  • RS at Gettysburg College

Congratulations to the winners of a space selfie taken from our Waypoint satellite in space

  • SG at Riverside City College
  • CC at Gettysburg College
  • JC at Missouri State University 
  • PG at University of Maryland

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We have also added something new to our spacecraft design -- Space Selfie capability! We have already added a color screen to the spacecraft body, and a camera to the back of one of the solar panels. We will be opening a separate crowdfunding sales campaign, so the general public can have their pictures taken in space and sent back down to them, along with the position, velocity, and orbital height when the picture was taken.

The customer photos will be loaded into the satellite prior to launch, and there will be enough storage to hold thousands of photos.  After satellite checkout in orbit, we will display each photo on the OLED screen and record the photo with the Earth in the background, then download via our laser downlink and email them their space selfies.

Designing this capability is not easy, mainly due to the temperature extremes. The temperature of a solar panel and other external parts can get as cold as -80 degrees Celsius, or the temperature of dry ice here on Earth.  We think the Space Selfie capability will be worth the extra work, and the sales campaign will be starting in early February.


Our crowdfund investment campaign at www.wefunder.com/spacefab  is closing in less than 30 days. We made it to Wefunder’s top five investment list for the week. We are gaining momentum, and hope to reach our minimum goal of $150K by the end of our campaign on February 23. Please consider investing or increasing your investment and help us reach our goal. All investments are held in escrow and will be automatically returned if we do not reach our campaign goal.

If you have any questions, you can reach us at www.wefunder.com/spacefab, or at [email protected] .

Thank you!

Randy Chung, CEO and co-founder, SpaceFab.US

Sean League, Director of Spacecraft Development and co-founder, SpaceFab.US

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