Thales and Exotrail Team Up for a New Space Software

The aerospace sector has seen rapid growth in recent years, with a particular focus on satellite constellations. The expansion of Space-Economy-related services has followed closely, and on July 12th, 2024, Thales Alenia Space and Exotrail unveiled an exciting collaboration on the matter.

The French-Italian joint venture signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the France-based Exotrail, a space services provider offering both software and hardware technologies. In their official press release, the two aerospace companies revealed a collaboration for developing a versatile ground-segment Satellite Command and Control software, to help companies and clients manage satellite constellations.

The project is based on the companies’ respective satellite operations software: Thales Alenia Space’s OPEN SCC and Exotrail’s spacetower™. Thales’ software is focused on managing data from the satellites’ systems for surveillance, testing, and automated operations. Exotrail’s spacetower™ is focused on flight dynamics management, offering positioning estimations, trajectory propagation, and more. Combining of these features would make a perfect tool for engineering and maintaining a constellation of satellites.

This new announcement has been cherished by both parties, with Dima Tanzilli, Head of Operational Strategies at Thales Alenia Space, stressing that  “Europe’s space sovereignty is a prime concern”. Both Ms. Tanzilli and Sébastien Duménil, Exotrail Chief Commercial Officer, view this agreement as a great opportunity for synergy of the two companies’ know-how and expertise. By combining the spacetower™ service with the OPEN Satellite Control Center, the two companies are aiming to offer a versatile and straightforward service to customers.

Helping with satellites directly and remotely

As an innovative and recently founded company, Exotrail has made some great achievements in the last year. It has distinguished itself in the European satellite sector, thanks to its innovative services and useful software.

Exotrail successfully entered the satellite operators scene when the first of its SpaceVan satellites launched aboard the SpaceX Transporter 9 mission in November of last year. Carrying experiments and proof-of-concept prototypes such as the Airbus Detumbler, the EXO-0 Cubesat was subsequently deployed by the SpaceVan orbital transfer vehicle on February 28th, 2024

The company had been working on its spacedrop™ launch and deployment service, proven with this test, permitting a more precise orbital insertion of small satellites, after their initial deployment from the rocket launcher.

The system also features an in-house developed propulsion system called spaceware™ the company is also planning to offer separately.

Then Exotrail is giving its customers various software options, cloud-based software-as-a-service or local, with the already mentioned spacetower™ now in development, and its spacestudio™ mission design and analysis tool.  With these tools, combined with Thales Alenia Space’s expertise in satellite systems management, as proven in their missions, the two companies are moving towards a more straightforward and simplified experience, that would allow more flexibility in an expanding sector of the European Space Economy.

The purpose of a Flight Dynamics Software

A good Flight Dynamics Software (FDS) is a fundamental tool today, coordinating satellite constellations for services such as communications, Earth observation, or military applications. A well-designed FDS is essential for tracking the evolving and in some aspects unpredictable environment of space.

Precisely, said software must account for various forces and moments acting on spacecraft, which influence their trajectories over time. Precise orbit and attitude determination are crucial. Specialized software algorithms provide a comprehensive view of how a satellite’s trajectory changes, helping to determine future stationkeeping requirements and comparing them with predictions.

This information is then used, by the software itself, to give flight dynamics engineers the means to plan future satellite maneuvers. This becomes especially important in the case of satellite collision avoidance, where both the actual position of multiple satellites or debris, and necessary corrections and delta-V requirements have to be rapidly taken into account.

Modern computers enable precise calculations that were unthinkable in the ’60s, and now significantly simplify the work of flight dynamics engineers. While the early space age has seen remarkable achievements thanks to many talented individuals, contemporary software has furthered and streamlined this process, allowing human ingenuity to take on great new challenges.