High quality space products at smallest possible size for best value to our customers
Our customers appreciate the long lifetime, the pointing accuracies and the very small size of our satellites for a cost efficient realization of their objectives. Challenging applications were addressed in missions for innovative - Earth observation (computed tomography, photogrammetry) - telecommunications (Internet of Space, secure communication) - navigation systems and in-orbit tests. Special emphasis is on provision of advanced small satellites, as well as on multi-satellite formation systems for our customers. The high-performance facilities of S4 for small satellite tests are offered also as service. Our customers appreciate the S4 elaborated subsystems and development kits as starting point for their own developments.
Launcher costs have a major impact on the total budget to place a satellite in orbit and scale proportional to the mass delivered. Thus, due to smaller launch costs more invest-ment remains for the satellite.
We take advantage of commercial electronic components. Here in huge commercial markets, by example regarding cellular phones, high performance components with mini-mum power needs were developed. To protect against the hostile space environment, our satellites use advanced fault detection, identification and recovery (FDIR) software to enable long lifetime in orbit.
A traditional satellite provides of course better performance than a small one due to more resources (power, size, …) available. Nevertheless, at the cost of a classical satellite, a fleet of hundreds of pico-satellites can be combined to realize distributed networks for challenging applications. Thus ex-cellent integrated performance by sensor data fusion can be achieved. Advantages are better robustness and fault toler-ance, excellent scalability, higher temporal and spatial reso-lution.
Our team designed, built and operated already 2005 the first German pico-satellite in orbit.
Based on that experience, subsequently crucial satellite functionalities were implemented and tested in orbit to realize leading edge advanced satellite systems.
Read more about what we do, the products we develop and the services we provide,
what we’ve achieved for clients and missions
We have worked with some of the largest institutions in the space business, providing products, services and solutions.
The German Aerospace Society DGLR awarded its prestigeous Eugen-Sänger-Medal to Klaus Schilling for his contributions to advance the technology of small satellites. Schilling’s research is currently focusing on distributed multi-satellite networks, performing complex joint observations such as computed tomography for improved climate predictions.
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LoLaSat (Low Latency communication Satellite) will in a very low Earth orbit (VLEO) take advantage of extremly short signal propagation delays. This will be of relevance for time critical applications, like autonomous driving, coordination of air vehicles (transport drones), and support in emergency situations.
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In the current DLR newsletter Countdown 40, the question of how the space startup scene in Germany is doing is explored. S4 Space GmbH which focuses on the development and implementation of advanced pico- and nanosatellite projects for ‘New Space’ has been highlighted with an interview of Prof. Dr. Klaus Schilling, one of the founders of the company.
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