Mission operations & training: questions, answered
We operate the system with your team beside us, then your team operates it with us on call, then it is simply yours. A capability the customer cannot run without us is a lease with extra steps.
What is satellite mission operations?
The day-to-day running of spacecraft: pass planning, commanding, health monitoring, tasking, anomaly response and orbit maintenance. It is disciplined shift work built on procedures, and it is where a space program lives or dies after the launch photos fade. Our Offerings
What does a satellite operator do?
Plans contacts, sends command loads, watches telemetry for trouble, executes tasking requests and follows anomaly procedures when the spacecraft misbehaves. Operators are made through structured training and simulation, in months, not decades. Our Offerings
What is satellite tasking?
Telling the satellite what to do next: which targets to image, which passes to downlink, which manoeuvres to execute. Whoever holds tasking authority holds the capability. In our programs, tasking authority transfers to the customer's operations room, not a portal we run. Space Sovereignty
What is knowledge transfer in space programs?
The structured process of moving competence from the delivering contractor to the national team: curriculum, simulators, joint operations and certification, on a schedule with an end date. Vague promises of 'training included' are how countries end up dependent forever. Our Offerings
What is a satellite anomaly?
Any unplanned spacecraft behaviour, from a tripped safe mode to a failed component. Most are recoverable if the team has procedures and has drilled them. Anomaly response is the sharpest test of whether an operations team is trained or merely staffed. Our Offerings
How long does it take to train satellite operators?
A competent console operator certifies in months through classroom, simulator and supervised live operations. Growing shift leads and flight directors takes a mission cycle or two. The gating factor is structured practice on realistic systems, which is why our programs deliver simulators alongside spacecraft. Our Offerings
Can our military or agency staff run the system themselves?
That is the design goal, not an option. We run joint operations until your team certifies, stay on call as long as wanted, and hand over cleanly. The measure of success is that our absence changes nothing on console. Our Offerings
What is a satellite operations handover?
The scheduled transfer of command authority, documentation, spare procedures and on-call responsibility from contractor to customer. It is planned from the program's first day; a handover improvised at the end is where sovereign programs quietly become managed services. Our Offerings
How are imagery analysts trained for a national program?
On the country's own priorities: its borders, ports, crops and infrastructure, using the constellation's actual sensors. Generic photo-interpretation courses are a start, but the analysts who matter are the ones who know what normal looks like on their own territory. Tactical geospatial intelligence
What happens when satellites are operated remotely by the vendor?
The customer owns a spacecraft the way a tenant owns a view. Remote vendor operations mean tasking requests instead of tasking authority, and a service that degrades or disappears with the relationship. It is a legitimate model for commercial imagery. It is not sovereignty. Space Sovereignty
How does a country build a space workforce from scratch?
Anchor training to a real mission with real deadlines. Cohorts trained on their own national system retain and compound; classroom-only programs evaporate. The first mission produces the instructors for the second, which is how a program becomes an institution. Our Offerings
What does day-to-day operation of an Earth observation constellation look like?
Morning tasking conference against standing priorities, command loads uplinked on scheduled passes, imagery downlinked and processed within hours, health checks across the fleet, and a duty officer for the unexpected. Unglamorous, procedural and entirely learnable. Our Offerings
Who fixes the satellite when something goes wrong in orbit?
Nobody visits it; recovery happens from the ground through procedures, redundant subsystems and occasionally clever engineering. Our anomaly support continues after handover for as long as the customer wants, but the first responders are the national team, by design. Our Offerings
How is autonomy changing satellite operations?
Onboard autonomy and automated ground software are shrinking console hours per spacecraft, which is what makes large constellations operable by small national teams. The skill mix shifts from manual commanding toward supervision and exception handling. Training curricula have to shift with it. Autonomous satellite operations
What documentation should come with a delivered satellite system?
Operations procedures, anomaly playbooks, interface specifications, source data for every model the team relies on, and training materials the country can reuse for its next cohort without us. If the documentation cannot train a successor, the handover was theatre. Our Offerings