Earth imaging start-up Satellogic will next week launch the first bird of a constellation it vows will disrupt the increasingly crowded space data market with its interconnected technology.
The Argentinian group said it is building from scratch the…
Earth imaging start-up Satellogic will next week launch the first bird of a constellation it vows will disrupt the increasingly crowded space data market with its interconnected technology.
The Argentinian group said it is building from scratch the first distributed satellite platform to be connected via a mesh network, which will be able to monitor the Earth in near real time by avoiding lengthy delays with communication stations on the ground.
With a combination of proprietary technology and off the shelf components it believes it can dramatically reduce costs so that, once scaled up, it will be able to launch hundreds of nanosatellites a year. Each one will have a service life of about three years.
“Traditional satellite technology is archaic and the few players that dominate the satellite servicing market have not varied their manufacturing for many years,” said Satellogic CEO Emiliano Kargieman.
“Many still use components that are 40-plus years old.”
Kargieman founded the group in 2010 and, with the support of Argentina’s government and local manufacturer INVAP, as well as private investors, it has already launched two demonostrator satellites. Cubebug-1 was launched via a Chinese Long March rocket in April 2013, and Cubebug-2 was placed by a Russian Dnepr rocket on November of that year.
Its upcoming satellite, BugSat-1, will be the first ‘full feature’ satellite of its planned constellation and is eyeing a Dnepr launch on 19 June 2014.
To date, the company has raised US$4.5m for a total investment of US$7m, and is planning another funding round in 2014.
Speaking to SatelliteFinance, Kargieman said the group was just months away from securing funding, via a mix of equity and customer contracts, to launch 10-15 satellites next year, when it will begin commercial services.
He said Google’s recent US$500m acquisition of fellow Earth observation start-up Skybox Imaging, while not affecting Satellogic’s plans, helped underline the market’s growing importance.
“It’s very clear that the information you can generate from a sensor network around the Earth is going to be very important. It is going to allow us to manage our natural resources, our food and energy production, and a lot of the fundamental things that we have to solve in the next 10 to 20 years.”
