Currently, over 8,900 satellites are travelling at 27,000km while they orbit our tiny blue planet. This amount of satellites has increased more than four-fold in the last three years as Companies race to have their technology in our skies. 

The military capabilities of satellites have been exploited since the first satellite launch in the 1950s, where they have been widely used to support military activities such as reconnaissance, communication, GPS, surveillance and providing internet to desolate locations around the planet. 

Recently, global space company Kleos Space (ASX: KSS) successfully inked a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the U.S. Navy to conduct joint data experiments under the SCOUT Experimentation Campaign. 

Under the cooperation agreement, Kleos will provide the Navy with its satellite capabilities. The satellites will be able to cover sanction reporting (especially with the brewing situation between Russia and Ukraine), embargos, transhipment monitoring (the transfer of illegal fishing catches from one vessel to another), search and rescue, smuggling, and border control. Each satellite will house Radio Frequency (RF) geolocation data which will be applied to realistic test scenarios to improve how the Navy responds to challenges in real-life situations. 

To prepare themselves and ensure the Company has enough satellites in orbit for sufficient testing, Kleos today has announced its plans to launch additional satellites into low-earth orbit as part of their Observer Mission (KSF3). 

Launch specialists, Spaceflight Inc have been assisting the Observer mission to make the mission as cost-effective as possible. The Company contracted ISILAUNCH who will take care of all aspects of the launch and get the spacecraft off the ground.

Launched in clusters of four and flown in formation, the satellites will form a Sun Synchronous orbit where each satellite has the same local mean time as the point it is passing over. Armed with an array of Automatic Identification Systems (AIS), Very High Frequency (VHF), and X-band radios on each satellite, this launch will extend Kleos data collection capabilities by up to an additional 119 million km² per day.

“The upcoming launch brings our low earth orbit constellation to 16 satellites, further increasing our data collection, intelligence, and reconnaissance capabilities. The Observer Mission features VHF and X-Band collection payloads, providing additional value and capabilities to our government and commercial data customers,” said Kleos Space CEO, Andy Bowyer. 

The mission was initially booked to launch in mid-2022 but was moved to rideshare with the SpaceX Transporter-6 mission following a series of issues with vibrations that Spaceflight discovered with the original deployment method.

The mission has a confirmed launch date for October 2022 and will deploy from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on an integrated ISILAUNCH launchpad.    

“We are pleased that we could offer our support to Kleos and Spaceflight with launch capacity on a launch that best fitted the needs of our customers and partners”, said Director of ISILAUNCH, Abe Bonnema. 

The SCOUT Experimentation Campaign will be broken into two phases of testing and development over 3-6 months. The first phase will not generate any revenue for the Company, nor will they incur any costs. Nothing indicates how much revenue phase two will generate, but if testing proves successful, the Company can remain faithful that they will reap the rewards.