Spire Global Awarded Space Services Contract by Lacuna Space to Build and Operate Six Satellites for a Dedicated IoT Constellation
December 05 2023 - 6:45AM
Business Wire
The agreement will enable Lacuna Space to
provide low-cost tracking and sensor detection service, with the
opportunity to scale the constellation to dozens of satellites
Spire Global, Inc. (NYSE: SPIR) (“Spire” or “the Company”), a
global provider of space-based data, analytics and space services,
was awarded a Space Services contract by Lacuna Space, a leading
satellite IoT connectivity provider. Under the agreement, Spire
will initially build and launch six satellites carrying Lacuna
Space’s payload and antenna, with the opportunity to scale the
constellation to dozens of satellites. Lacuna Space will operate
its payloads and receive encrypted data at its Harwell
headquarters.
With six satellites manufactured by Spire at its facility in
Glasgow, UK, in addition to Lacuna Space’s ten earlier satellites,
Lacuna Space will be able to scale its IoT network for low-cost,
reliable global connections to sensors and mobile equipment. Lacuna
focuses on IoT services for agriculture, maritime, logistics,
remote infrastructure and environmental monitoring, with
applications such as measuring soil moisture for farmers in remote
regions to improve crop yield or tracking the movement of
assets.
These satellites feature Lacuna’s new proprietary, ultra-high
density ‘Gentoo’ satellite gateway. The satellite gateways work in
conjunction with Lacuna’s ground scheduling network, which enables
adaptive, regional, fine-frequency algorithms developed using AI
from years of satellite-based spectrum scans.
“Satellites play a critical role in providing IoT connectivity
across the globe, particularly to remote, underserved, and
developing areas of the world. These services are transformational
in enabling new applications across a wide variety of industries
and solving some of the biggest challenges facing humanity today,”
said Frank Frulio, the general manager of Space Services at Spire.
“With Spire Space Services, we have streamlined the process to
architect, build, launch and operate satellites reliably, and at a
much lower cost than it would typically require new space companies
to build infrastructure in space, allowing revolutionary
technologies, like Lacuna’s IoT network, to reach the market
faster.”
“This contract is a very important step in Lacuna’s progression
into commercial operations, and represents over five years of
intensive development work to refine the concept and achieve the
scalability and reliability required to provide a global commercial
service,” said Rob Spurrett, CEO and co-founder of Lacuna
Space.
“Glasgow produces more satellites than anywhere else in Europe,
and this contract between Spire Global and Lacuna Space is a
fantastic example of how the UK’s strong heritage in space
manufacturing is accelerating our progress towards global
connectivity and new commercial applications for
telecommunications,” said Craig Brown, investment director at the
UK Space Agency. “This collaboration will unlock opportunities for
businesses, using satellites to transfer data and information
between millions of sensors on the ground that make up IoT, with
the potential to scale up further. I’m looking forward to watching
the constellation come to life.”
Spire Space Services offers fast and scalable access to space
through a subscription model that eliminates the high upfront cost
of building and maintaining infrastructure in space. The Company
has designed, built, and launched more than 170 satellites,
enabling commercial and government organizations to easily deploy
and operate a constellation, hosted payload, or a software
application in space leveraging Spire’s established space, ground,
and web infrastructure. Spire handles the end-to-end management,
from manufacturing to launch to satellite operations, and the
customer operates the system through a web API.
About Spire Global, Inc.
Spire (NYSE: SPIR) is a global provider of space-based data,
analytics and space services, offering unique datasets and powerful
insights about Earth so that organizations can make decisions with
confidence in a rapidly changing world. Spire builds, owns, and
operates a fully deployed satellite constellation that observes the
Earth in real time using radio frequency technology. The data
acquired by Spire’s satellites provides global weather
intelligence, ship and plane movements, and spoofing and jamming
detection to better predict how their patterns impact economies,
global security, business operations and the environment. Spire
also offers Space as a Service solutions that empower customers to
leverage its established infrastructure to put their business in
space. Spire has nine offices across the U.S., Canada, UK,
Luxembourg, Germany and Singapore. To learn more, visit
spire.com.
About Lacuna Space
Lacuna Space, a UK and Dutch entity, headquartered in Oxford UK,
is recognized as the leader in scalable direct-to-satellite IoT
solutions based on the open and interoperable LoRaWAN® standard.
The Lacuna Network enables multiple constellations of Lacuna and
third-party satellites to meld together, forming the most robust
and field-proven IoT service for our customers. Operating a
wholesale model, Lacuna empowers service providers and systems
integrators to extend the limited coverage footprint of LoRaWAN®
networks around the globe with ubiquitous low-power, low-cost
connectivity.
Learn more at https://lacuna.space/contact/
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231205715623/en/
For Spire: Kristina Spychalski Head of Communications
Kristina.Spychalski@spire.com
For Spire Investors: Benjamin Hackman Head of Investor Relations
Benjamin.Hackman@spire.com
For Lacuna Space: Kitty Howie Kitty@lacuna-space.com
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