Mission overview

StriX-β, the company’s second demonstration satellite, is a product of this effort.  StriX-α, the company’s first satellite, was successfully launched into its target orbit in December 2020.

StriX-β will be launched into a one-day recurrent sun synchronous orbit making it possible to capture particular spots on the Earth at the same time and under the same conditions daily. In other words, we will be able to acquire high-quality data to understand changes and trends at specific locations in the Earth’s surface.

Following, we plan to launch a commercial prototype satellite, StriX-1 (Strix One), later this year. By 2023, we will have six satellites in total, bringing us closer to a planned constellation of 30 satellites that enables wide-area, high-frequency Earth observation.

Launch mission

Company Name
Rocket Lab, Inc
Rocket
Electron
Range
New Zealand
Orbit
Sun-synchronous orbit, altitude 561 km
Launch date
28th February UTC.

The Owl’s Night Continues

It is oftentimes a tradition that space companies create a mission name or an iconic mission patch emblem for their respective satellite launch missions. In honor of this and in partnership with Rocket Lab, we named the StriX-β satellite launch, ‘The Owl’s Night Continues.’

From “The Owl’s Night Begins” to “The Owl’s Night Continues”

The StriX satellite series derives its name from a parliament of owls. ‘Night’ demonstrates SAR’s capabilities to detect changes to the Earth’s surface, independent of weather conditions on Earth and at any time of day or night. The last word, ‘continues’, illustrates that this is the second satellite of many to come and Synspective’s presence in the skies keep expanding.

StriX-β images

The StriX-β images and Mission Patch are available for download.

Download StriX-β images

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