Lacuna Space in-field sensor. Photo: Lacuna Space

Spire Global will build and operate a six-satellite IoT constellation for Lacuna Space under a new Space Services contract announced Tuesday. 

Spire will build six initial satellites at its facility in Glasgow in the United Kingdom. These satellites will scale Lacuna’s constellation, in addition to its existing 10 satellites. Lacuna has the option to scale the constellation to dozens of satellites as well. Lacuna Space previously launched satellites with platforms built by Open Cosmos and NanoAvionics. 

These new satellites will feature Lacuna’s new proprietary ‘Gentoo’ satellite gateway. The satellite gateways work in conjunction with Lacuna’s ground scheduling network. Lacuna Space’s IoT constellation operates on the interoperable LoRaWAN standard. The company focuses on IoT services for agriculture, maritime, logistics, remote infrastructure and environmental monitoring, with applications such as measuring soil moisture or tracking the movement of assets.

“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. 

Spire offers Space Services in addition to its proprietary radio frequency monitoring data and products. The company handles end-to-end management, and customers can deploy a constellation, hosted payload, or a software application using Spire’s infrastructure. Its other Space Services customers include Myriota, GHGSat, and NorthStar Earth & Space.