British company Blue Skies Space to launch satellite in 2025 to study star flares, exoplanet habitability

The MAUVE mission aims to advance our understanding of stellar magnetic activity, powerful flares, and their potential impacts on the habitability of exoplanets. (Image credit: https://bssl.space)

Blue Skies Space Ltd, a British company, will launch its MAUVE satellite in October 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.

MAUVE, being developed by a consortium of European companies, including C3S and ISISPACE, will be Blue Skies Space’s first satellite mission. It features a 13-cm telescope designed to observe hundreds of stars in ultraviolet and visible wavelengths.

The mission aims to advance the understanding of stellar magnetic activity, powerful flares, and their potential impacts on the habitability of exoplanets.

Blue Skies Space CEO and co-founder Marcell Tessenyi said, “We are delighted to confirm the launch date for Mauve. It is a crucial step in our mission to accelerate the supply of space science data and making it accessible to any researcher, anywhere in the world. Mauve’s rapid development timeline—less than three years from concept to launch—represents a new paradigm in the swift delivery of science satellites and their essential datasets.”

Here is lowdown on the MAUVE satellite mission:

MAUVE is designed to monitor stellar flares, which are intense outbursts of energy from stars, including Sun. These flares can significantly impact modern technology and climate.

The satellite will focus on stars that have potentially habitable exoplanets — planets outside our solar system that could support life.

MAUVE will observe these flares in the ultraviolet spectrum (200-700 nanometers), providing detailed data on stellar magnetic activity and flaring events.

Unlike other ultraviolet satellites, MAUVE will concentrate on stars similar to the Sun, aiming to generate unprecedented amounts of data on stellar flares in the ultraviolet range.

The data collected will help scientists understand how powerful stellar flares affect exoplanet atmospheres and their potential for harbouring life.

This research is expected to improve “space weather forecasts” for exoplanets and contribute valuable information for future space missions, such as the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the Ariel mission.