Coarse Sun Sensors for commercial small satellites

About

Built for the realities of commercial smallsat programmes

Long Arc Space Systems is a New Zealand space hardware company developing the CSS-1 Coarse Sun Sensor — a compact, flight-ready attitude sensing component for CubeSat and smallsat missions.

The CSS-1 is designed to compete directly with established components in the ±0.5° accuracy class, offering multiple mechanical variants to match common spacecraft interface footprints. Our focus is on delivering traceable qualification data, responsive support, and commercially viable pricing for mission teams at every scale.

Founder

Twenty years building hardware that has to work

Long Arc Space Systems was founded by Caleb Brewerton, an electronics engineer based in Kerikeri, Northland. Caleb has spent two decades designing and shipping embedded systems across marine, agricultural, and energy sectors — from RF transponders and payment terminals to production test infrastructure for high-volume electronics manufacturing.

Most recently, Caleb designed solar panel payload electronics for Extraterrestrial Power's Waratah satellites, which have been successfully operating in orbit since August 2024. CSS-1 is the next step: a purpose-built space hardware product developed from the ground up in New Zealand.

Prior roles include electronics and production test engineering at Datamars (agricultural electronics), Vesper Marine (AIS transponders), and Invenco (outdoor payment terminals). Caleb holds a LabVIEW Certified Developer certification and brings deep experience in DFM collaboration, analogue signal chain design, and low-power embedded firmware on MSP430 and STM32 platforms.

Roadmap

A full New Zealand-made attitude sensing line

CSS-1 is the first product in a planned line of attitude sensing components for the smallsat market. A Fine Sun Sensor (FSS-1) is in planning as the next product — targeting higher accuracy applications where a coarse sensor alone is insufficient.