Dutch startup Hiber has launched the first of a planned constellation of 48 nanosatellites that it says, together, will “provide the entire planet with the ability to stream data to and from connected technologies.”
A second satellite was due for launch on 29 November but was delayed because of adverse winds in the upper atmosphere.
The 48 satellites, each roughly be the size of a large shoebox, be launched over the next five years, will be in Sun-synchronous orbit at a height of about 600kms.
Hiber says they will use a process that is up to 20 times cheaper than existing global solutions, by transferring data from modems and antennas owned by customers directly to the nano-satellites, and back to earth via the two existing earth stations in Spitsbergen in Norway and Delft in the Netherlands.
The company says user terminals could operate for up to 10 years on a small battery, communicating via either a 10cm diameter cylindrical antenna 6cms high, or an 8cm square 2cm high slab antenna.
Hiber is collaborating with Amazon Web Services and was named the AWS Commercial Launch Startup of 2018 on the 25th November. It has also partnered with IBM Watson and Actility (whose IoT platform specific for LoRaWAN is used by Australia’s NNN Co) for integration into existing cloud services. It says this will enable customers to easily build unique applications with global data-streaming capabilities.
Hiber says its network will be commercially operational from Q1 2019, serving more than 25 pilot customers. The company estimates there is a potential £3.5B ($A7b) opportunity for growth as potential IoT projects falter due to a lack of connectivity.
One of its pilot customers, the British Antarctic Survey, will use the satellites to transmit data from remote measurement stations that do not presently have access to satellite communications.
Other customers include a Dutch company that plans to put climate stations in schools in rural communities in Peru, Tanzania and Sri Lanka to educate tomorrow’s smart farmers and Blik Sensing, which helps manage water resources by providing insight into global groundwater levels.
