Third Planet Orbital helps visionaries, system experts and integrators to eliminate mission and revenue delays. Providing access on demand to development platforms, and functionally standardised satellite buses off-the-shelf that are independent of mission critical paths.

Simplifying Time to Mission Success

Third Planet Orbital supplies reliable building blocks for space technology users, deliberately concentrating on robustness and repeatability, allowing users to dedicate effort on payload design and application.

Ready-To-Go Products Shortening Routes To Space
Products & Services

Providing early access to knowledge (Space Engineering Services) and hardware (FlatSat Rental) throughout the customer design process lowers overall build costs and increases operational confidence. Commoditised supply of standardised products (Satellite Buses) that are understood, tested and verified, reduces lead times and mission risk.

Space Engineering Services

Space Engineering Services

Third Planet Orbital provides a service assisting customers to define their Route to Space, working closely with users to analyse and define their technical needs and mission end goals. Building on a foundation of interdisciplinary Classic-Space System Engineering, Third Planet Orbital reviews the entire system in context of the customers Management, Production, Management, Assurance, and Operations methodologies.

Space System Engineering Model

Customer collaboration underpins expert creation of a Work Breakdown definition, Mission Requirements, and Satellite Technical Requirements. The robust baseline facilitates confident and efficient hardware & software sourcing, driving the payload user to mission operation with minimised risk.

Requirements Gathering

The Third Planet Orbital team's knowledge base, experience and its extensive network enables continued support throughout a user's journey to mission success, to the benefit of all stakeholders ( Academia Bullet icon Hardware Suppliers Bullet icon Launch Providers Bullet icon Missions Planners Bullet icon Operations Bullet icon Ground Segment Bullet icon Licensing).

FlatSat Rental

"Hardware-In-the-Loop"

FlatSat Rental

Third Planet Orbital offers On-Demand access to its FlatSat comprising principal components and software but without non-functional parts such as the structure. Long or short utilisation periods can be accommodated to optimise Design & Development activity, crucial to putting missions into Space.

On-Demand FlatSat

Early access to Hardware-In-the-Loop iterative capability is key to designing payloads into satellite buses effectively. The Third Planet Orbital FlatSat is made available in a state where software integration and core subsystem interfaces are established resulting in a single standardised managed interface.

Third Planet Orbital Managed FlatSat

Users benefit from being able to test using physical equipment rather than relying on data sheets eliminating additional changes and delays post equipment purchase.

A secure internet tunnel to a Third Planet Orbital FlatSat is made available to enable users to "Try-Before-You-Buy". The financial burden of acquiring hardware that either sits on the shelf or is later 'de-selected' is eliminated. and cost efficiencies are accrued by only renting hardware for the duration required rather than making an outright purchase.

Third Planet Orbital Provisioning System

Demand based increases to Cloud Platform services and automated booking systems facilitate optimised user access to available FlatSat hardware. Automation enables Continuous Development and Continuous Integration software lifecycles, where engineers can provision access to FlatSats within their existing programming environments.

Satellite Bus

Satellite Bus

Missions and Revenues rely on achieving critical paths. Third Planet Orbital's functionally standardised 'Off-The-Shelf' satellite bus comes with all hardware assembled, software installed, and configured ready for user payload integration.

Satellite Bus

Standardised manufacturing processes and sub-systems allow flight proven and test proven architecture to be consistent from bus to bus Customers benefit from available, repeatable, resilient supply. Even users of a single bus gain economies of scale.

Third Planet Orbital's baseline satellite bus is a standard 12U with potential for up and down scaling to satisfy specific needs at 16U, 24U and 6U sizes.

Tabulated Satellite Bus Sizes

Third Planet Orbital welcomes engagement from users ready to go, and those in the early development stages of their missions and projects.