Ibadan, 1 March 2023. – Bright Ascension Ltd and Third Planet Orbital Ltd have announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) fostering collaboration and development of joint capability. The agreement commits the two companies to pool their expertise and resources to identify and pursue promising opportunities within the fast-growing New Space industry. Through this collaboration, Bright Ascension and Third Planet Orbital will form the foundations of a standardized integrated software and hardware platform.
Leveraging the combined skills and capabilities of Bright Ascension and Third Planet Orbital, the partnership aims to improve access to functionally standardized satellites for payload and mission operators. Bright Ascension’s modular software directly supports Third Planet Orbital’s approach to establishing a robust, repeatable and resilient supply chain. Furthermore, the use of pre-existing and prevalidated libraries accelerates the integration of hardware independently of the customer critical path.
The integration also promises to streamline customers’ development activities, delivering cost-effective and off-the-shelf solutions that are mission-ready at launch and realize revenues early. Moreover, it enables effortless access to a wider and well-integrated space software infrastructure through Bright Ascension’s HELIX suite of products, ranging from managing ground operations to delivering space-based services and transforming them into value-added insights and applications.
Speaking on the agreement, Peter Mendham, CEO of Bright Ascension, said, “By combining our strengths, we aim to offer a substantially cheaper, better and easier access to spacecraft development, which also comes with pre-existing and tightly integrated mission growth opportunities, such as automation of operations or spacebased data delivery for further insights and intelligence, provided through our upcoming HELIX suite of software products.”
Likewise, Third Planet Orbital CEO Miles Ashcroft said, “The opportunity presented by the space sector is enormous, and our job is to make it as easy as possible for payload users to become mission-ready.”
