A Start - Up in the United Kingdom has proposed a solution to lower the barrier to scientific research with small satellites and a subscription model, instead of nation-led space telescopes that cost billions of dollars. The scientific community is watching to see whether this launch can be more than a simple technology test and become the starting point of a new era of astronomy led by the private sector.
The international journal Science said on the 4th (local time) that Blue Skies Space plans to sell a subscription service for space observation data. The company will launch the nanosatellite Mauve on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the United States on the 10th and start the service.
Blue Skies is a company founded at University College London (UCL) and took note of the fact that reservations are fully booked if you want to use the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble was launched 35 years ago, but observation requests are six times more than the actual time available. In particular, there are almost no space telescopes capable of observing ultraviolet light like Hubble, so many researchers give up after waiting their turn.
Blue Skies created Mauve by placing an ultraviolet telescope in a module of 16 CubeSats through consolidation. The overall size is similar to a microwave oven. The Hubble Space Telescope is about 13 meters long and 4 meters wide, the size of a school bus. Unlike typical space telescopes, which require billions of dollars and more than 10 years of development, Mauve was completed in two years with a budget of a few million dollars.
A CubeSat is an ultrasmall satellite whose basic unit is a cube with a side of 10 cm and a weight of 1 kg, and multiple units can be attached depending on function. CubeSats were originally developed for education as ultrasmall satellites, but thanks to recent advances in electronics, they now perform tasks that used to be done by large satellites.
The Mauve project was driven by 1.2 million euros (about 2 billion won) in subsidies from the European Union (EU), investors, and early subscribers. According to Science, the subscription fee is equivalent to one year of salary for a doctoral student, and nine research teams have applied for subscriptions. Through the subscription, researchers can receive in real time all the data collected by Mauve.
Emma Whelan, a professor at Maynooth University in Ireland and one of Mauve's first users, told Science that it is a very interesting experiment, noting that daily observations of changes in young stars will allow a deeper understanding of how stars form.
Blue Skies expects that once Mauve's performance is proven after the first launch, more researchers will join. The revenue from Mauve will be reinvested in the development of Twinkle, a next-generation 0.5-meter-class telescope for observing exoplanets.
Experts believe this attempt will open a paradigm for private space science in the future. Already on the ground, more private telescopes are being operated for a fee. The nonprofit Las Cumbres Observatory operates 25 robotic telescopes around the world, with researchers paying for the amount of time they use. This model is expanding into space.
Thanks to mass production of communications satellites, launch costs and component prices are falling rapidly, leading to projections that small Hubble-class space telescopes funded by donations or subscription fees will be possible. Previously, the Keck Institute for Space Studies in the United States proposed repeatedly building and launching standard 1-meter-class space telescopes based on private funding.
Jon Morse, former astrophysics director at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and president of AstronetX, said it would benefit the entire astronomy community if more space observation asset were created through diverse funding structures, adding that the model will become even more important when public budgets are shrinking.
References
Science (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.zc096xk