To get started with ATLAS, you need: 

• Your email address to login 
• x, y, z

Steps to sign up: 

• Click on sign up here 
• Do step 1
• Do step 2
• Confirm email in Step 3 

You’re all done.

A lot of the value we provide is not offered by traditional integrators. Our users have also reported that they have a number of other issues with traditional integrators which we address.

• Price point: One-stop shop satellite manufacturers tend to be too expensive for most operators, even despite falling hardware costs.
• Single-source: Users are uncomfortable with single-source components and their inability to integrate third-party components.
• Opaque processes: Users are uncomfortable with not knowing what's going on at any given stage, since everything gets handled in-house by the integrator. Sometimes weeks go by without any news, which makes it difficult to make plans and arrive at independent estimates of timelines.
• Analog processes: No integrator in the industry provides intuitive dashboarding capable of tracking progress across all workflows. This means that the degree to which traditional integrators can assist is limited to their scope of work. It's entirely run on emails and excel, which leads to a tedious UX and long lead times, with sales cycles lasting from anywhere between 2 months to 1.5 years.
• Speed: Integrators do not fundamentally speed up the process because they are using the same operational infrastructure. If planning a satellite mission is a bus ride, using an integrator is just swapping out the bus driver.
• Lack of flexibility: Traditional integrators are separate organizations and therefore cannot react as quickly to changes in circumstances on the operator’s side. This lack of flexibility constrains operators by locking them into one mode of work years in advance of an actual launch. Most of our users report being apprehensive about committing to this mode because of the steep upfront switching costs.
• Scalability: We grow with our users and are able to support their needs. The challenge of launching satellites never really diminishes, and once operators commercialize and upscale their operations, their missions become more complex, worsening the problem further. We are designed to be capable of scaling and growing with our users so that we can keep up with the increasing complexity of their requirements.
  
  

With Atlas, our users now have a centralized dashboard that addresses most of the concerns above.

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Charter is currently running a closed pilot program to selected users as we continually iterate. Pilots will receive access to ATLAS for free throughout the duration of the pilot program, and will get to enjoy discounts on pricing plans once the full build of ATLAS is released in Q3 2023.

Here are further ways in which we make joining Charter a worthwhile experience: 

1. Mission planning and operational and logistics management are not the main businesses of our users.

A satellite operator generates money from being able to gather and sell satellite data, not by getting to orbit. Mission planning and operational and logistics management are necessary means to an end which do not contribute to operators' core value propositions. These activities also occupy and fatigue intellectual and human capital which would be better served elsewhere to actually generate value. In other words, in-housing mission planning only exhausts operators by increasing the effort required to even get to the start line before the race commences.

2. Planning missions in-house creates risks
   
   Costly errors and inefficiencies can be introduced, causing later delays. A significant proportion of launch delays, wasted hours, and wastage is caused by errors resulting from in-housing, which will often be conducted by people unfamiliar or inexperienced with all the necessary subject areas and competencies. Furthermore, information opacity and unavailability often means that operators will be unaware of better options and solutions, leading to further wastage.
   
   

Planning missions in-house may be impossiblegiven that certain key competenciesSatellite systems engineering, licensing or regulatory compliance are highly specialized expertise and expensive to acquire. A number of such key competencies are needed for the process to succeed. Instead, customers may just hire experienced mission management consultants to handle the process instead.

No. We do not offer consulting or brokerage services, nor do we plan to. We are first and foremost infrastructure builders. Our core business is to make satellite missions easier to launch at a structural level.

Consultancies and brokers offer symptomatic solutions by addressing particular issues endemic to wider structural problems while failing to fix the root cause. Charter, by contrast, is focused on effecting persistent changes to mission planning processes on a structural level.

For example, a consultancy would take over the work that an operator would normally have to do by acting as a mission manager. Nothing about the mission itself is changing besides the person running it. When the operator attempts to plan the next mission, the process hasn't gotten any easier, meaning they will have to hire the consultant again. The net gain of the exercise has been zero from both an experiential learning and process development perspective.

Charter is instead building smarter processes that are less laborious per se and which make it easier to plan a satellite mission. Charter is also building the infrastructure required to support these smarter processes. We are not just middlemen who take over the satellite operator's role to plan missions and manage processes for them. We are building a smarter way to do things which will reduce operational friction and minimize the structural transaction costs of planning missions.