Launched via a Soyuz rocket at approximately 7:20 EDT on 28 September, the two expand Kepler’s narrow-band availability and pave the way for early customer trials of Kepler’s Everywhere IoT service.
They are further intended to “greatly increase” the capacity of Kepler’s global data services offering and expand Kepler’s narrowband availability.
Commenting on the launch, Mina Mitry, CEO of Kepler Communications, said: “This is a milestone event for Kepler marking the start of our aggressive launch campaign in the coming months. It is through the unrelenting work of our team that we are heading to orbit with the first satellites entirely produced in our facility. Our current rate of satellite production will allow our network to grow significantly in the coming months, and we look forward to putting the service in the hands of our customers.”
Built at Kepler’s Toronto production facility, the GEN1 platform builds on Kepler’s pathfinder satellites, with an increase in size to a 6U-XL BUS. This accommodates additional power and antenna capabilities that allows the support of both Ku and narrowband spectrum from a single satellite. This multi-spectrum support is achieved with Kepler’s proprietary Software Defined Radio (SDR) which has been proven onboard the three satellites already on orbit.
Kepler’s CTO, Wen Cheng Chong, added: “GEN1 for Kepler is built upon the foundation laid down by KIPP, CASE & TARS which served as our technology & service demonstration satellites. We worked together with the team from the Space Flight Laboratory here in Toronto, who has more than 20 year of flight heritage, to develop a new generation of satellites that can deliver a dramatic improvement on our Global Data Service.”
Kepler has one more launch scheduled for this year, which will add further GEN1 satellites to the constellation. This is scheduled for December.
