Alba Orbital
Alba Orbital, is a Scottish company building PocketQube satellites. Alba Orbital is the developer and manufacturer of the Unicorn-1 and Unicorn-2 satellite platforms. The company holds contracts with the European Space Agency. Overview. Alba Orbital builds and designs picosatellites, small satellites that are under 1 kg in mass. Picosatellites are modular with each 1P of volume equal to 5 cm x 5 cm x 5 cm and with capabilities of stacking these modular units together to get larger volumes. Its Unicorn-1 platform is a 1P picosatellite while its slightly larger Unicorn-2 platform is a 2P satellite that is  5 cm x 5 cm x 10 cm. Launches. Alba Orbital is a launch broker , and in the last year it has announced partnerships with several space companies, including Vector and Rocket Lab, in order to send PocketQube satellites into space. These launches harbor clusters containing space for PocketQubes that is sold to teams wanting to send a pod along. The first launch on December 6, 2019 had room for 6P worth of PocketQubes and was launched on an Electron rocket from Rocket Lab. The payload contained the picosats: SMOG-P, ATL-1, FossaSat-1, Noor 1a (Unicorn-2b), Noor 1b (Unicorn-2c) and  TRSI. The next two cluster deployments will have room for 12P and are scheduled to launch on a Falcon9 from SpaceX. Three launches are planned for 2022. All Alba Orbital launches use Albapod deployers in order to release the clusters. These deployers come in two sizes: 6P and 96P. Funding. In 2021, Alba Orbital participated in the startup accelerator program Y Combinator, located in Silicon Valley in the United States. They raised $3.4 million after completing the program.