ION Satellite Carrier

ION Satellite Carrier (formerly ION CubeSat Carrier) is a satellite platform developed, manufactured, and operated by Italian company D-Orbit. The platform features a customizable 64U satellite dispenser capable of hosting a combination of CubeSats that fits the volume. Throughout a mission, ION Satellite Carrier can release the hosted satellites individually, changing orbital parameter between one deployment and the next.[1] Each of the miniature CubeSats weighs a few kilograms.

The organization also developed a D3 (D-Orbit Decommissioning Device) system, which has obtained funding from the European Commission and the European Space Agency, to safely dispose of satellites at the end of their lives and avoid adding to the problems created by the approximately 130 million pieces of space debris. According to D-Orbit, a space circular economy is feasible, and space recycling will soon be a new sector. This will involve using local resources such as dead satellites to create spaceships in space.[2][3]

The inaugural mission, named Origin, was launched on Vega flight VV16 from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana on September 3, 2020.[4] The vehicle, named ION SCV Lucas, carried 12 SuperDove satellites from Planet_Labs. On September 25, ION SCV Lucas released successfully the first SuperDove satellite of the batch; the last satellite was deployed on October 28. As of November 2022, ION SCV has successfully completed 11 missions, 1 as a payload of a Vega rocket and 10 as a payload of a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket.

D-Orbit is a successful alumnus of the European Space Agency's incubator, ESA BIC Portugal, and the two firms collaborated on Project Sunrise, an active debris removal project, in 2019.[2][5]