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Three Seraphim Space portfolio companies hitch a ride with SpaceX

Three of space tech investor Seraphim Space’s portfolio companies – D-Orbit, Spire and Iceye – have successfully launched assets into orbit onboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The satellites that all three have deployed in space can fundamentally help address pressing climate change issues such as disaster relief, natural habitat destruction, energy usage and predicting extreme weather events.
 
Spire Global added six further LEMUR satellites to their constellation of over 100 shoe box sized, multi-purpose satellites that track every plane and ship whilst also collecting proprietary high fidelity weather data. Spire is helping the world mitigate ever-increasing climate change induced extreme weather events, enabling us to identify earlier when and where a hurricane is going to hit whilst supporting the aviation and maritime sectors to become more efficient, more sustainable.
 
Iceye has built upon its category leadership adding a further four satellites for their radar constellation, which is already the largest constellation of its kind. These satellites provide high resolution capability, under all conditions day/night and during bad weather. Iceye’s capability has universal application such as understanding where a flood has hit, how much damage it has caused, where help is needed most. Other applications including monitoring illegal deforestation.
 
D-Orbit is known as the “FedEx of space” using its Ion spacecraft for an in-space last mile delivery service for transporting their customers’ satellites to their precise orbital destinations. This will be D-Orbit’s third Ion mission and comprises satellites and payloads from 12 different customers. This includes a radiation tolerant computing node from Unibap which D-Orbit will use to demonstrate on-demand, on-orbit cloud computing and data storage capabilities once it has finished deploying other customers’ satellites to their target orbits.
This demonstration will act as a precursor to D-Orbit’s ambition for having full data centres in orbit. On Earth data centres currently consume circa 4 per cent per cent of world’s electricity and produce similar levels of CO2 emissions as the aviation sector. The benefits of having data centres in space are substantial due to the limitless solar energy and cold temperatures of space.
 
Mark Boggett, CEO of Seraphim, says: “This launch marks another milestone for Seraphim ahead of the IPO of Seraphim Space Investment Trust on the FTSE’s main market on 9th July. The successful launch of assets by D-Orbit, Iceye and Spire is yet another example of the strong growth Seraphim’s portfolio companies. These companies truly are turning science fiction into science fact, and we look forward to supporting them further as the demand for space related technologies continues to grow.”
 
 

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