At the 2023 Small Satellite Conference, True Anomaly announced that they will be using Redwire Space’s SpectraCam navigation cameras and SpectraTrac star trackers on its Jackal inspector satellite due to launch next year.
Redwire’s offerings are adopted by many different small-satellite and nano-satellite developers for different use cases, but True Anomaly worked with Redwire to create a customer offering specific for Space Domain Awareness applications. The Jackal satellite will attempt to “interrogate” uncooperative satellites and take images at close ranges. This modification of low-cost, high-performance COTS components demonstrates an example of how hardware will be used the nascent Space IoT market.
Redwire is a manufacturer with significant space heritage, providing hardware that operates across the solar system, but new manufacturers will also be incentivized to provide adaptable and modular solutions that can serve various different industry applications. This partnership will likely be one of many to come in the near future.