On July 10, Astrix presented in a New Zealand session at the CubeSatPlus conference. Astrix’s CTO and co-founder Will Hunter presented alongside Sarah Kessans (University of Canterbury School of product design), Vernon Lewis (Te Pūnaha Ātea – University of Auckland Space Institute), and Dimitri Geidelberg (New Zealand Space Agency).
Astrix’s mission is to solve critical supply chain and performance issues in spacecraft, and has been working hard over the last few years developing inflatable, rigidising deployable components to meet this vision, including an in-space test in 2022. Will discussed what Astrix has learnt over this time to give more insight on where inflatable components can provide immense benefits, where they have weaknesses, and a sense of the practicalities in using them. Also discussed were the increasing benefits of inflation with larger spacecraft sizes, with microsats and 100kg class satellites being where the majority of Astrix’s product offerings lie.
Thank you Andrew Dempster, Chris Cubbage and the team at ACSER for arranging this event!
