Lessons Learned from Our First Mission â Whatâs Next
By Lijie Zhu
You donât forget your first satellite. The build nights that turned into early mornings. The failed antenna deployment tests. The unexpected victories â like hearing that first beacon. Itâs messy, humbling, and wildly addictive.
At Interstellar Communication Holdings Inc., launching HADESâICM wasnât just a technical milestone. It was a transformation. We moved from theory to orbit, from whiteboards to downlinks, from dreaming to doing. And now, standing on the other side of that mission, weâve had time to reflect.
Thereâs this thing in aerospace â a kind of reverence for "lessons learned." These arenât just bullet points for presentations. Theyâre the subtle truths that shape your next design, your next team meeting, your next decision to try again.
So, hereâs what we learned from our first mission â and where weâre headed next.
1. Simple â Easy
We started with a belief that simplicity would be our strength. Keep the payload lean. Use off-the-shelf components. Minimize points of failure.
And that worked⊠until it didnât.
Space has a way of exposing every assumption. A connector rated to survive vacuum might technically be compliant, but if it wasnât crimped just right? Youâll find out â probably too late. A firmware patch that works flawlessly on the bench might become unusable with real Doppler shift and noise floor interference.
Takeaway: Simplicity is still our design principle â but it now includes margin, redundancy, and a healthy dose of paranoia.
2. The Ground Game Matters More Than You Think
We obsessed over our satelliteâs health. But what we didnât obsess over enough â at least not early â was the ecosystem around it.
Our ground station worked, sure. But we didnât fully anticipate how many variables would affect data integrity: temperature drift in SDRs, local RF noise, the quirks of third-party decoding software, or misconfigured time stamps.
Then thereâs the human side. Volunteers around the world started logging our signals â some with better reception than we had! We scrambled to onboard them, verify their reports, and build tools to streamline it.
Takeaway: You donât just launch a satellite. You launch a network â and every link matters.
3. People Show Up If You Let Them
One of the most surprising â and moving â parts of the HADESâICM mission was the sheer enthusiasm from people we didnât even know.
A university group in Argentina tracked us daily. A student in Bangladesh wrote code to parse our telemetry. An artist in Norway submitted an FM beacon poem idea â which, in hindsight, we probably should have flown.
What started as an internal project became⊠something bigger.
Takeaway: Participation isnât just possible. Itâs powerful. The next generation of mission design must invite community from day one.
4. Redundancy Is Not Optional
We cut a few corners. Not recklessly â just budget-wise. And for the most part, our single-string architecture held up.
But we also had a few close calls:
A partial telemetry blackout due to thermal expansion
A low battery cycle we didnât predict
A weird data glitch that resolved itself (thankfully)
In each case, a bit of redundancy â a second sensor, a watchdog circuit, a fallback mode â wouldâve saved us stress.
Takeaway: Redundancy doesnât have to be bulky. It just has to be thoughtful.
5. Donât Wait to Celebrate
We were so focused on "making it work" that we sometimes forgot to pause. To say, âHey, that test passed â letâs enjoy this.â Or, âOur satellite just deployed, and itâs alive.â
Thatâs easy to skip in startup mode, or when deadlines blur into each other.
But space is hard. Wins matter. And even small ones deserve a moment.
Takeaway: Mission culture is just as important as mission specs. Celebrate your team.
So⊠Whatâs Next?
After HADESâICM, weâre building toward a more open, scalable platform:
More modular PocketQubes â faster to iterate, easier to adapt
Payloads by invitation â artists, teachers, and tinkerers welcome
A new community dashboard for real-time tracking and experimentation
Open source tools to decode and visualize data with no prior experience
Weâre also working on the next icMercury mission, which we hope will reflect everything we learned â and everything weâre still figuring out.
And in November, weâll be heading to London for the 2025 Go Global Awards, hosted by the International Trade Council. Being nominated is a big deal for us â not because of prestige, but because of what it represents: that our work is part of something bigger. That space innovation is being recognized as a global language â and weâre proud to be fluent in it.
Itâs not just a ceremony. Itâs a convergence â a gathering of the worldâs builders, thinkers, and doers. And weâre grateful to be in the room.
Final Thought
First missions are never perfect. Ours wasnât. But it was real. And thatâs what matters.
Because now we know what works â and what weâd never do again.
Thatâs how weâll build whatâs next. With humility. With excitement. And with a deeper understanding that space â like innovation â is better when itâs shared.














