Total success of the launch of the first Spanish picosatellites that will offer IoT connectivity for industrial assets in areas without ground-based coverage occurred on January 13 for aerospace startup FOSSA Systems with the deployment of the company’s third smallsats mission via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Just 18 hours after launch, the FOSSA Systems engineering team confirmed that all of the smallsats have established communications with more than 365 TinyGS (Open Network of Ground Stations), low-power, IoT stations around the world, using the LoRa communication frequency.
The launch occurred from Cape Canaveral and the first members of the FOSSASat-2E mission reached their assigned orbits at 5:32 p.m., CET.
With full connectivity achieved, the technological milestone in the field of picosatellites (smallsat platforms weighing less than one kilo) is completed. FOSSA Systems plans to deploy a constellation of 80 smallsats in successive launches prior to 2024. The company’s objective is to offer global IoT (Internet of Things) connectivity in areas without mobile coverage for low-power devices. This is the first Spanish company, and one of the first ten in the world, to deploy a constellation of IoT smallsats.
Designed and integrated in Spain, the six picosatellites were launched and deployed in SSO — the FOSSASat-2E will orbit the Earth approximately 15 times a day, allowing a single satellite to provide global coverage, anywhere on the planet.
FOSSA Systems offers a turnkey service that includes data collection, monitoring and analysis, offering an optimal and available solution for all types of industries, from power plants, fish farms, agriculture, Defense to maritime transport, among others. The launch took place just three months after FOSSA Systems obtained two licenses from the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transition, which enabled the company to operate a public, satellite-based, electronic communications network, as well as to the transmission of data by the same system.
The launch occurred 18 months after the company was founded by Julián Fernández, CEO, and Vicente González, the firm’s CTO.
Fernández said, “This is the first step in an ambitious deployment that will democratize access to IoT connectivity at a global level, demonstrating the success of the technology and the capabilities that we can offer. Billions of connected devices will come online over the next decade, and we aim to serve much of the market in remote areas. All this, reducing orders of magnitude the cost compared to traditional satellite connectivity. "
González added, “Today begins a new stage for FOSSA and, although there is still a long way to go, we are closer to achieving one of our main objectives, which is none other than offering optimized end-to-end solutions for each use case, with low-power IoT connectivity as core."
