HEO Robotics captures photo of deployed Starlink V2 satellite on orbit

Last week, SpaceX launched its first set of Starlink V2 Mini satellites, which will help the company build out their internet service to be more financially viable. Now, a company has shared imagery of one of these satellites with its solar panels deployed which they captured using on-orbit assets.

Satellite-to-satellite imagery

HEO Robotics captured the image of one of the 21 Starlink V2 Mini satellites just a week after it launched. The image shows the solar array that powers the satellite fully deployed, a very different look from the stacked satellites we got a look at before.

The company normally provides satellite-to-satellite imagery and on-orbit satellite inspection services for satellite operators and governments.

HEO Robotics was founded under the belief that space should be transparent. We are pioneering software and hardware technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate mission to image anything within the Solar System on demand.

As of last year HEO Robotics had access to 33 satellites in low-Earth orbit, where they would use existing cameras to capture imagery when they weren’t otherwise in use, creating another revenue source for satellite operators. But last year they launched their Holmes imager. Designed to be mounted on other spacecraft as a secondary payload, the Holmes imager has a 0.4 degree field of view designed to capture space-based objects from space while drawing just 6 watts of power.

HEO Robotics has set the goal of gaining access to LEO, MEO, GEO, and Cis-Lunar by 2027. This constellation will supercharge our HEO Inspect product and help us achieve ubiquitous coverage of the earth-moon system. Four cameras will be launched into orbit by the end of 2023 and to achieve this we have partnered with three different space companies.

This isn’t the first time HEO Robotics has shared some of their imagery publicly. Last year, the company captured the uncontrolled reentry of the center core of the China’s Long March 5 rocket. Captured from 355km away, the imagery shows the rotation of the rocket body before its eventual reentry.