Palm sized satellites, 3D printed rockets herald new era in space by Nikkei Asia

Thanks to the advances in technology and the drop of launch costs, launching satellites has become more feasible than ever. It is expected that more than 20,000 satellites wil be launched within the next 10 years for observation and communication purposes. This project illustrated the front lines of space industries, focusing on the private sector, and forecasted how satellite business revolutionize our life in the future by using 3D techniques.
We published the content in Japanese and English. Published in late December 2022, Japanese version was read by more than 11,000 readers. This content contributed to acquire some paid subscribers. We got a good reputation from experts of satellite industries and they recommended our content on social network.
Throughout this project, Japanese space industry experts Space Shift helped us to collect materials. After repeated negotiations with Rocket Lab and other space companies, we got a chance to enter the sites where usually are restrictive area. Our journalists actually visited factories and labs in New Zealand and UK. Since Rocket Lab’s CAD data of the rocket was not available for publication due to the security reasons, we reproduced it by combining open source information and the results of our interviews.
We used Blender for 3D modeling. We sourced a 3D model of rocket from open source site Sketchfab and modified it by using images provided from Rocket Lab, US/New Zealand based startup. Satellite location data was collected from Space-Track.org and we plot them on orbits with Python. For visualization of satellites, we used JavaScript library Three.js.