Flavia Tata Nardini Archives - International Mining

Fleet Space Technologies, a leading Australian space exploration company, has announced the successful deployment of its next-generation Centauri-6 satellite on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-1 mission, bolstering its end-to-end mineral exploration solution, ExoSphere.

The satellite was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA. The addition of Centauri-6 to Fleet Space’s satellite constellation will play a vital role in servicing the global demand for ExoSphere, while also building capacity to deliver advanced SATCOM capabilities with microsatellite architectures.

The successful launch of Centauri-6 is the latest development from Fleet Space after a period of exponential growth and innovative breakthroughs unlocking new capabilities in the global space sector, it says.

Rapid global adoption of Fleet Space’s satellite-enabled mineral exploration solution, ExoSphere, has been the catalyst behind the company’s sustained innovation in space technologies and growth over the past year. Over 40 exploration companies – including Rio Tinto, Core Lithium and Barrick Gold – have used the technology to complete 300-plus surveys for a variety of critical minerals across five continents, according to the company.

“Humanity’s expanding satellite infrastructure is rapidly unlocking new capabilities that can help to address some of the most pressing challenges facing our planet,” Flavia Tata Nardini, Co-Founder and CEO of Fleet Space, said. “At current rates of mineral discoveries and production, our net-zero goals and clean energy future are unattainable in the coming decades. Leveraging the latest advances in space technology, AI, and geophysics – Fleet Space is demonstrating a path to accelerate mineral exploration in a more data-driven, scalable and sustainable way. Centauri-6 is a portal into a future of efficient, mass-scale satellite manufacturing that can unlock previously unimaginable satellite-enabled solutions to hard problems on Earth.”

Centauri-6 has been designed with multiple upgrades to optimise the resilience and durability of the satellite while also enhancing the overall capacity of Fleet Space’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation to support the growing demand for ExoSphere, the company says. Centauri-6 has greater uplink capacity and redundancy, enabling more resilient data transfer from Fleet Space’s satellite-enabled seismic sensors on the ground. The satellite has also been designed with an ion electric propulsion system powered by solar panels to provide thrust in the vacuum of space. Centauri-6’s design also leverages 3D-printed components – including the 3D-printed metal patch antenna Fleet Space pioneered on earlier Centauri satellites.

Matt Pearson, co-Founder and Chief Exploration Officer at Fleet Space, said: “Innovation in microsatellite architectures is advancing at an unprecedented rate, unlocking new capabilities across sectors at scale. The reprogrammability of our Centauri satellites enables in-orbit software updates that can deliver all-new capabilities, as we recently demonstrated with Centauri-4 – making it the world’s smallest known voice-enabled satellite. This marks a significant leap forward in the history of spacecraft – making a future with more energy-efficient, high-performing, flexible, and resilient microsatellite infrastructure within reach for the global space sector.”

ExoSphere, Fleet Space’s flagship mineral exploration technology, combines the latest advances in satellite connectivity, edge computing, AI and geophysics to deliver 3D subsurface models of a survey area in days with near-zero environmental impact. To generate the 3D models, Fleet Space’s patented satellite-enabled seismic sensors – called Geodes – are distributed into an array across a survey area, then the data is transmitted and processed by Fleet Space’s satellite constellation in LEO, providing near real-time access to survey results for exploration customers around the world, the company claims. Traditionally, seismic data acquisition and processing has taken months or years before it can be used as part of an exploration campaign. By delivering 3D subsurface models up to a depth of 2.5km in days, Fleet Space is radically reducing the time and resources needed to accelerate mineral discovery in support of the clean energy transition.

Fleet Space Technologies has announced three new features to its mineral exploration technology, Exosphere by Fleet®, designed to enhance and accelerate data-driven global mineral exploration efforts with machine learning (ML) capabilities and real-time survey diagnostics.

The introduction of new ML-powered features and real-time sensor diagnostics to ExoSphere enables faster on-site targeting decisions and provides access to greater subsurface insights before, during and after every survey, the company says.

Bringing together Fleet Space’s satellite constellation in low Earth orbit and patented seismic array technology, ExoSphere delivers 3D subsurface models of a survey area in days with near-zero environmental impact, according to the company. Over 35 global exploration companies have used the technology to complete hundreds of surveys for a wide range of commodity types across five continents, including Rio Tinto, Barrick Gold and Core Lithium, among many others.

“A future with near instantaneous access to subsurface insights that can lead to the next wave of mineral discoveries needed for the energy transition is within our grasp due to rapid advances in space technology,” co-Founder & CEO of Fleet Space Technologies, Flavia Tata Nardini, says. “Technologies like ExoSphere, and the ML-enabled, real-time features we are building for it, represent a major leap forward in the potential scale and speed of data-driven exploration while also reducing environmental impact.”

With ExoSphere’s 3D subsurface models and ML-enabled features, exploration customers will be able to leverage a variety of new subsurface insights on-demand to accelerate and enhance their data-driven exploration efforts, according to the company.

Outlined below are the new ExoSphere features available today and others that will arrive in the coming months, including Geological Sketch, Basement Depth, and Real-Time Diagnostics.

Geological Sketch
Starting today, customers using the ExoSphere platform will be able to access Geological Sketch – a powerful visualization tool that allows them to convey their understanding of the geology and lithology of their project. Using this visualisation, Fleet Space’s in-house team of geophysicists can refine the customer’s 3D model with a wider range of insights before, during, and after their survey is complete – enhancing model accuracy while also unlocking new insights to inform their targeting decisions, the company says.

Basement Depth Map
Understanding basement depth is critical since it is an important indicator of the economic potential of a project. In the coming months, ExoSphere will have a ML-enabled feature that will provide a projection of the basement depth based on customers’ ANT survey results (example below). Customers will also be able to upload other insights they have about the lithology and geology of the area to enhance the prediction on the ExoSphere platform. This gives customers an efficient way to evaluate and visualise the potential basement depth of a project as part of their data-driven exploration efforts, according to the company.

Real-Time Diagnostics
Fleet Space’s patented, space-enabled seismic sensors (Geodes) have been deployed across the globe. As part of their deployment, customers will soon be able to review the diagnostics on each individual Geode used as part of a survey in real time to determine if any corrective measures should be taken to optimise their performance while in the field, the company says. Real-Time Diagnostics is a powerful tool for on-site teams to make quick adjustments to the Geodes without the need to remove them from the survey area which is common with other methods.

The addition of these new features follows several other additions to ExoSphere last year, including the Sensitivity Model, Data Processing Report and Source Data Pack.

Alongside this Exosphere announcement, Fleet Space Technologies announced that it has been named an industrial affiliate of Stanford University’s Mineral-X program – a premiere research organisation combining deep expertise in geoscience, resource optimisation, and artificial intelligence to enable a resilient and decarbonised mineral supply chain. Through this collaboration with Stanford University’s Mineral-X, Fleet Space aims to advance research, unlock innovation and accelerate humanity’s clean energy future leveraging space technology.

Fleet Space Technologies joins Ideon Technologies in being named as an industry affiliate of the program, who made a similar announcement in November last year.

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