Earlier this week, space safety company Kayhan Space launched the next tier of its space traffic management (STM) platform, Pathfinder Pro.
Kayhan’s ultimate goal is to fully automate all collision avoidance maneuvers in orbit, cofounder and CTO Araz Feyzi told Payload. LEO, in particular, is poised to get a lot more crowded over the coming decade, and the space domain environment needs more transparency and collaboration from satellite operators if we are to keep Earth orbit as debris-free as possible. “Otherwise, you can throw the whole system into chaos very easily,” Feyzi said.
Pathfinder Pro: The newest tier of Kayhan’s STM platform allows satellite operators with no onboard propulsion at all to determine available collision avoidance maneuvers. Altering a satellite’s cross-section (often by adjusting its solar panels) or attitude changes its drag profile. With enough warning, operators can use this to adjust orbits and lower collision risk.
The platform’s features also include:
- Automated collision risk assessment
- Generated maneuver options
- Tertiary collision risk (aka additional potential collisions that arise after making a maneuver)
Kayhan has already secured Capella Space, Globalstar, and Lynk Global as customers for its new platform. Feyzi says that the Essentials tier of its platform has more than a dozen users.
Paired for launch: Kayhan unveiled two other products for space safety:
- Eagle, which quickly propagates out a satellite’s orbit 14 days in advance
- Gamut, which provides collision risk data for each stage of a launch
Right now, satellite operators are still solidly in the loop when it comes to deciding when and how to maneuver a satellite. In the future, Kayhan hopes to build a sophisticated enough STM product with enough trust and heritage to remove nearly all possibility for human error.
