Image Credits: Loft Orbital
SaaS – software-as-a-service – was the paradigmatic acronym for startups operating over the last decade. But if Loft Orbital has its way, SaaS will soon come to mean something very different: space infrastructure-as-a-service.
The San Francisco-based startup has already made enormous progress by developing what it calls an “abstraction layer” between the satellite bus and payloads: it buys standard satellites from vendors like Airbus and LeoStella and outfits them with payloads from customers, saving them the hassle of purchasing, operating and managing their own hardware and ground segment network.
But Loft Orbital sees even greater demand for space access, because it’s rolling out a new product that takes customer hardware out of the question entirely. In a new initiative the company is calling “virtual missions,” customers…
