BIFROST – The Raw Data Problem

Lesson #1: BIFROST – The Raw Data Problem

When receiving tasking requests for the Danish/Swedish BIFROST mission, our team encountered a challenge that many ambitious space missions eventually face: Success creating a bottleneck.

One of the mission's innovative payload sensors is designed to acquire a large amount of raw data per observation. During one particularly ambitious test campaign, the projected data volume was so large that downloading everything through the nominal chain to ground would have required all passes for nearly four weeks.

Rather than accepting this as an operational limitation, our Satellite Operations Team and R&D Software engineers came together to rethink the entire science data flow - from sensor to ground.

The result was not a single breakthrough, but a series of carefully engineered improvements that led to Space Inventor's first in-flight installation of our Centralised Payload Storage Service (CPSS).

By introducing CPSS, the team established an optimized, spacecraft-wide approach to onboard data logistics, ensuring that every ground station pass could be utilized at maximum downlink capacity. At the same time, the operations team developed new procedures, workflows, and trained until every step had become a second nature.

The outcome exceeded expectations.

Thanks to these combined software, operational, and procedural improvements, what was initially estimated to require almost four weeks of downlink time was reduced to less than four days - without compromising the mission objectives or the integrity of the collected data.

Inventing Solutions - Flexible Modularity as a Mindset

At Space Inventor we often talk about Flexible Modularity as a way to describe our design and manufacturing. But it’s also a way of thinking about and adapting to challenges. 

We are committed to continuous improvement - not only in the technology of the spacecraft itself, but across the entire mission system where we optimise science return using all segments.

We understand that the true value of mission data is realized when it reaches the ground and can be put to use. Data stored onboard a spacecraft does not create value; data delivered to our customers and partners in a timely fashion does.

For us, the spacecraft and the ground infrastructure are two sides of the same coin. Optimizing one without the other is only half the solution. By continuously improving both, and training our people and client operators to use it, we help our customers receive more data, faster, and unlock the full potential of their missions.