Sateliot Plans to Start Offering Service in 2022 with a Turnover of 236 Million Euros by 2025

• Download all the pre-launch images and videos at this link
• Download the presentation here 
• Follow the launch live on Saturday at 07:07:12 CET at this link

BARCELONA, Spain (Sateliot PR) — Sateliot, the company that will launch this Saturday from the Baikonur base in Kazakhstan the first nanosatellite of a constellation of up to 100 to extend the Internet of Things globally and massively with 5G coverage, plans to start offering service in 2022 to bill more than 236 million euros in 2025, as revealed today by its CEO, Jaume Sanpera, at a press conference with journalists.

With this launch, Sateliot will enter a new technological phase that will allow it to carry out field tests in real environments, which will provide very useful information for the evolution and integral design of the constellation.

All in all, the company estimates that it will close the year 2025 with a total workforce of more than 100 people. To make this possible, Sateliot has already closed its series A for 5 million, the first tranche of financing with the majority participation of European investors and funds.

This operation is part of a specific financing plan divided into three distinct phases: Series A, which will be used to complete the R&D phases related to the payload and launch of the first nanosatellites; Series B, which aims to deploy another 16 5G nanosatellites to launch the commercial service by 2022-2023; and finally, Series C, worth 70 million, for the full deployment of the constellation to guarantee a commercial service in near real-time.

In this context, the company has also explained the details of this first mission with its own ‘Mission Badge’, which will be launched aboard the Soyuz-2 rocket on Saturday at 07:07:12 CET on a journey that Sateliot will also share with the ninth Earth observation satellite to be launched by South Korea and more than thirty other small satellites.

How the satellite is assembled inside the Soyuz rocket

As Jaume Sanpera explained, the satellite will be assembled inside a deployer or ‘deployer’ that later goes on board the rocket. This is a box in which the inactive satellite is inserted. This deployer contains springs that will propel the satellite into space once it reaches its orbit. This is both a difference to traditional satellites, which are assembled directly on the rocket structure, and an advantage, as it reduces the risk of damage to other satellites inside the rocket in the event of a launch failure, and also facilitates the assembly of the nanosatellites on the rockets.

Which phases this satellite will pass through (link to the recreation of the trajectory it will follow)

Once everything is ready for launch, the Soyuz-2 spacecraft will take off from Baikonur early in the morning of Saturday 20 March. The operation will follow until the satellite goes into orbit will be similar to that of a lift, so that as it reaches altitude, it will leave its payload at the agreed orbits or ‘stops’. Specifically, Sateliot’s satellite will operate in a low orbit, located at around 500 km altitude. Then comes the Commissioning phase, the stage in which the satellite will be prepared for operation, carrying out all kinds of checks and verifications of its systems until the first operational tests are carried out (this phase can take several weeks). Later, it will be time for the operation, for normal functioning, until, in a maximum of 25 years, it will be forced to re-enter the atmosphere and disintegrate.

How the satellite is positioned in its orbit. How it stabilizes and starts operating

When the Upper Stage Fregat reaches the position programmed for the Sateliot nanosatellite, the sequencer will give the command to eject the satellite and the deployer will eject and activate it. The satellite will move away and the power supply will start to reach the satellite’s main components. The satellite will spin around in its orbit and a control system consisting of a series of sensors and actuators will determine its exact position with respect to the sun, the earth’s horizon, and the magnetic field. This system will then begin to act to stabilize the satellite in the best position so that the solar panels, once deployed, can absorb as much energy as possible.

When will we know that the satellite has been successfully deployed?

When it communicates with the radio station near the North Pole, at what is known as the Svalbard Satellite Station in Norway. It will pass by every 90 minutes or so. And it will communicate twice a day for an average of 6 minutes.

What will we know about the satellite as it passes the radio station?

The first communication will be to measure the satellite’s telemetry. How the satellite is doing and its payload. They will provide information, for example, on whether the solar panels are generating enough power, on the state of charge of the batteries, on the state of the processing unit, of the memory. What its position or speed is, etc. It will also be possible to program commands into the satellite until it can finally start working with IoT messages.

What is special about Sateliot’s nanosatellite?

Nanosatellites are built on standardized parts. What changes in each of them is the payload they incorporate. In Sateliot’s case, it will be used to carry out 5G IoT tests to make the radio signal compatible with 5G mobile operators. 3B5GSAT will be the world’s first satellite to test ground-to-space communications with 5G coverage.

Who’s who on this mission

While Sateliot will be the operator offering Internet of Things services with 5G coverage through this type of satellites that will act as telecommunications towers from space, Open Cosmos – the company that operates satellite missions from start to finish – has been in charge of their construction, mission management, launch, and operation. Alén Space was responsible for the design of the payload, the pioneering engineering model on board that will enable IoT services to be extended on a massive global scale. In the final stages leading up to the Soyuz-2 rocket’s liftoff, the Russian company GK Launch is also the ‘space’ provider coordinating all the details of the satellite’s launch and orbiting.

Sateliot is the first satellite telecommunications operator to provide global and continuous connectivity to all the elements that will make up the Internet of Things (IoT) universe under the 5G protocol. Thanks to a constellation of state-of-the-art nanosatellites, located at low altitudes and acting as mobile towers, Sateliot is the perfect complement to large telecommunications companies by providing them with the necessary infrastructure where terrestrial technologies do not reach. More information on our web, Twitter y LinkedIn.