A Spire Lemur 2. Photo: Spire Global.

Orbitare has reached a deal with Spire Global to deploy its personal satellite communication network, Spaceloop, on Spire’s nanosatellite constellation. Orbitare will send two in-orbit demonstrations of Spaceloop to orbit this year onboard Spire satellites, the company announced Monday. This partnership is an example of Spire’s Space-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription offering. 

Orbitare is working to build Spaceloop, a personal satellite communication network in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) to offer IP messaging, email and file transfer capabilities in remote areas where land networks are not accessible. Spaceloop is co-funded by the government of Luxembourg through a European Space Agency (ESA) contract. 

In the first mission in April 2021, Spire will host its Spaceloop’s software on a software-defined radio onboard one of its LEMUR 3U satellites. Then in June 2021, Spire will fly Orbitare’s first full-duplex Spaceloop communications payload. Spire will manage all satellite operations, and Orbitare can access its payload through Spire’s customer API.

“Thanks to Spire’s Orbital Services, the deployment of our commercial services will be significantly accelerated, allowing Orbitare to reach our customers at a much earlier stage. Moreover, running Spaceloop on Spire’s satellites and ground stations gives Orbitare access to a much larger footprint at no additional capital expenditure. This partnership gives us a level of flexibility that is hard to find in the market,” commented Luis Muñoz, founder and managing director of Orbitare.