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Satnews Daily
March 7th, 2018

Maritime and Ice Monitoring Data Agreement Signed by ICEYE with KSAT


ICEYE, a leader in synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) technology for smallsats, now has an agreement with Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) who will purchase SAR satellite tasking and data from ICEYE.

The maritime and ice monitoring data will be collected with ICEYE-X1, ICEYE’s first satellite in orbit, which was successfully launched in January.

Norway-based KSAT is a provider of global ground station and Earth observation services. With interconnected and unique polar ground stations in the Arctic and in Antarctica, a growing mid-latitude network, the company operates more than 130 antennas in an interconnected network for access to polar orbits. KSAT currently supports more than 100 satellite missions, including ICEYE-X1, with ground station services.


Artistic rendition of the ICEYE-X1 satellite.
Image is courtesy of ICEYE.

Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE, said that the company was initially started with a focus on actively monitoring changes in sea ice and maritime environments as a whole. The firm has now evolved to support many different industries with the company's Earth Observation (EO) data services. Working alongside KSAT, ICEYE is excited to provide the company with greater visibility into their areas of interest and together push the envelope forward for ice and maritime monitoring.

Jan Petter Pedersen, SVP at KSAT, added that KSAT is generally interested in any new SAR mission to support the evolving user requirements. The company sees the ICEYE mission as an interesting contribution to complement the firm's existing portfolio of multi-mission SAR based services. ICEYE is planning to launch at least two additional missions throughout the remainder of 2018. The missions, ICEYE-X2 and ICEYE-X3, will help to further develop and demonstrate the company’s SAR sensor and data acquisition capabilities for select customers.