This week with...Luisa Buinhas
Luisa Buinhas is a space systems engineer and co-founder of German startup Vyoma GmbH, a venture that aims to join observational data of space debris with satellite operations. Vyoma won the Startup Space pitch competition at Satellite 2022.
TechCrunch: What are you working on?
Luisa Buinhas: At Vyoma, I support Phase B activities of our satellite mission. Critically, on this very week, we are conducting the final evaluations of potential ground communications networks that we will use to talk to our satellites. At the same time, I intend to finalize and submit to DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt, or German Aerospace Center) a proposal we have on the pipeline dealing with automation of decision-making in space traffic management.
What’s something that happened in the news in the last week that you can’t stop thinking about?
The announcement of three new heavy-lift rockets that will put thousands of Amazon’s Project Kuiper satellites in low-Earth orbits. In total, 3,236 new satellites will be added to an already crowded space in the coming years. Although there is value in providing broadband connectivity, particularly to remote corners of the world, this will further stress an over-congested space environment and exacerbate the issue of space debris.
Seven billion people on the planet depend on space-based services, from navigation to communications and weather forecast. With the increase in space traffic, the risk of these services start being disrupted because of in-orbit collisions (between satellites or between satellites and debris) rises exponentially, bringing life here on Earth to a standstill — even flights cannot take off without satellite services! As a tragedy of the commons, this is yet another reminder of the extreme importance of keeping our orbits clean for generations to come.
What are you looking forward to next week?
Since we moved to a new office here in Munich recently, I look forward to decorating it with new furniture and matching wall art this week. On a personal level, a friend of mine who I have not seen (in person) in three years is coming to Munich tomorrow and I could not be happier to catch up. Finally, Easter is just around the corner, so I look forward to catching a flight back to Lisbon for a few days and go chocolate egg hunting with family. To our dismay, our dog always ends up discovering (sniffing out) the secret locations where we hide the chocolate, so Easter games are a lot more fun for her.
What song has been on repeat?
Lately, I’ve had a huge nostalgia of my teenage years living in São Paulo, Brazil, so Zeca Pagodinho (“Seu Balancê”) and Zélia Duncan (“Catedral”) have heavily featured on my playlists.
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