D-Orbit, the space logistics and orbital transportation company, has launched Spacelust, the fifth mission of the Company's proprietary ION Satellite Carrier (ION), aboard SpaceX's Transporter-4 mission. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off April 1, 2022, at 12:24 PM EDT from the Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), Florida. ION, a versatile and cost-effective orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) designed both to precisely deploy satellites and perform technology demonstrations of third-party payloads in orbit, was successfully deployed at 1:50 PM EDT into a 500 km Sun synchronous orbit (SSO).

"The pace of our missions is growing fast, and we're thrilled to add the fifth ION to the fleet of our vehicles that are already in orbit", said Renato Panesi, Ph.D., D-Orbit's Chief Commercial Officer. "Every mission we launch is built upon the success of the ones that came before it. We are steadily increasing our performance with each new mission, expanding our customer base and growing our exceptional team. As we execute our strategic plans, we are continuing to demonstrate the strength of our technology and are advancing D-Orbit's path to enabling the transportation and logistics infrastructure to drive the evolving space economy."

With the launch successfully completed, D-Orbit's mission control team is currently going through the mission's Launch and Early Orbit phase (LEOP), performing a series of health check procedures in preparation for the operational phase.

The Company has four more ION launches scheduled for the remainder of 2022. The next ION mission, Infinite Blue, is scheduled for no earlier than June 2022.

Partnering with Valued Customers
The Spacelust mission includes satellites from Kleos Space S.A. (ASX:KSS, Frankfurt:KS1, Kleos) via Spaceflight Inc., satellites developed at the Space Exploration Laboratory (SPEL) and a hosted payload from Upmosphere.

+ For Kleos Space, a space-powered radio frequency reconnaissance data-as-a-service (DaaS) company, D-Orbit will deploy four satellites which will:

+ Augment the capabilities of the company's eight satellites constellation, increasing the average daily revisit rate to around five times a day over a 15-degree latitude area of interest, while expanding Kleos' data collection capability by up to an additional 119 million kilometers per day.

+ The resulting twelve-satellite constellation will be able to detect and geolocate radio frequency transmissions to within 300 meters, improving the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities of governments and commercial entities to expose illegal activity on land and sea.

D-Orbit is partnering with Spaceflight to deploy its customer Kleos' satellites on this mission. To prepare for launch, D-Orbit worked in close collaboration with the Spaceflight and Kleos teams to perform all operations necessary to adapt and integrate the satellites aboard ION.

+ For SPEL, D-Orbit will deploy three additional satellites, developed by the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Mathematics (FCFM) at the University of Chile in collaboration with the University of Santiago de Chile. These three satellites include:

+ PlantSat, a 3U CubeSat that will study the growth of a plant in low Earth orbit in an environment that will replicate the conditions on the surface of Mars; and

+ The Satellite of the University of Chile for Aerospace Investigation's (SUCHAI) nanosats, SUCHAI 2 and SUCHAI 3, which will perform basic science research funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the basic research technical directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The satellite data will be studied by multidisciplinary teams, which will undertake cutting edge research on scientific exploration and technological development.

+ For Upmosphere, which offers customers a chance to launch smaller personal items that will travel around the Earth for several years aboard ION, the payload for this mission consists of a wooden UP-box containing mementos from four different clients.

Proposed Business Combination with Breeze Holdings
D-Orbit is a market leader in the space logistics and transportation services industry with a track record of space-proven technologies and successful missions.

Founded in 2011, before the dawn of the New Space market, D-Orbit is the first company addressing the logistics needs of the space market. ION Satellite Carrier, for example, is a space vehicle that can transport satellites in orbit and release them individually into distinct orbital slots, reducing the time from launch to operations by up to 85% and the launch costs of an entire satellite constellation by up to 40%. ION can also accommodate multiple third-party payloads like innovative technologies developed by startups, experiments from research entities, and instruments from traditional space companies requiring a test in orbit.

D-Orbit is a space infrastructure pioneer with offices in Italy, Portugal, the UK, and the US; its commitment to pursuing business models that are profitable, friendly for the environment, and socially beneficial, led to D-Orbit S.p.A. becoming the first certified B-Corp space company in the world.

As previously announced on January 27, 2022, D-Orbit has entered into a business combination agreement among Breeze Holdings Acquisition Corp. ("Breeze Holdings") (NASDAQ: BREZ), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, D-Orbit and a newly formed joint stock company (societe anonyme) governed by the laws of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg ("Holdco") pursuant to which Holdco will become the publicly traded parent company of Breeze Holdings and D-Orbit upon the closing of the transactions. The transaction is expected to close in the second or third quarter of 2022, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including certain governmental approvals and the approval of the shareholders of Breeze Holdings and the contribution of the D-Orbit shares by the D-Orbit shareholders.

Related Links
D-Orbit
Space Technology News - Applications and Research

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