As companies continue to drive the satellite industry forward, new opportunities are developing in areas like SmallSat manufacturing. We dove deeper into this phenomenon on Episode 52 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters Podcast, when we spoke with Aleksander Fiuk, the Co-Founder and COO of Revolv Space. Revolv is a NewSpace company on a mission to fully monetise space assets by building the next generation of critical components for payload systems onboard small satellites. Here’s how they’re doing it. 

What are the current limitations of SmallSat manufacturing?

The limitations come from the fact that over the course of the past 20-25 years, payloads have been miniaturised and developed to the extent that they can be extremely effective and high-performing. However, there are continuously increasing demands for data transmission, thermal and power system capabilities. We’re focusing on offering a full ecosystem of products and hopefully solving that problem in the near future for our manufacturers. 

But the problem doesn’t stop there. The technology is available, but we also need a supply chain to satisfy the needs of the NewSpace market. We often hear from our customers and other stakeholders that the need is there. They’ve identified the need for improving the power budget or the data transmission rates, or whatever their technical problems are, but what they are lacking is a reliable partner in the industry. They need a supplier for those components and solutions.

One of the key aspects that is not being satisfied by suppliers in the industry is the customer’s need for much higher flexibility than what was the standard in the industry until quite recently. As a customer, we expect a supplier to adapt to the fact that we don’t know what we need. We don’t expect a supplier to line up a plan of five years of development with every single day broken down to detail for us, but we expect suppliers to be there for us and be able to adapt to a changing schedule or changing requirements. We expect suppliers to be very agile and adaptive themselves, otherwise, they wouldn’t cope with the changing dynamics of the market. Somehow, though, that hasn’t always translated. 

How does your approach differ from traditional ways of working with manufacturers, and what impact do you see it having on NewSpace customers?

There are two things that I think are really making a difference. One is our transparency. What we saw already before founding Revolv is that the space industry is extremely secretive. To a certain extent, it’s justified, because you cannot fully share certain information with your customers as a supplier, like the full information about your developments. It just doesn’t make sense though, because your customer is your closest partner for the development of your product or project. Therefore, being transparent was what got us those first contracts. Whenever there’s a problem, we signal it right away. Whenever there is an obstacle with the supply chain, logistics, or contracts, we are always very vocal about what is happening and how we want to deal with it. 

The other difference is approachability. Prior to founding Revolv, we saw that the space industry is extremely slow, and that’s something we’ve heard from customers too. That’s quite often what is pushing them away from other suppliers or partners because it takes an extremely long time to get a response on basically anything, from talking about contractual matters to technical details. We adapt to the customer, meaning that whenever required or desired by the customer, we will set up a separate communication channel, like Slack, for example, to discuss an issue. 

To hear more about Aleksander, tune into Episode 52 of The Satellite & NewSpace Matters here. 

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