TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Swissto12, the Switzerland-based small geostationary satellite specialist, has signed a contract to build the first optical relay spacecraft using its washing machine-sized HummingSat platform.<\/p>\n
The company announced the contract March 23 with Japanese data relay venture Space Compass, which plans to use the spacecraft to support near-real-time Earth observation services.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur HummingSat is the first commercial GEO optical relay satellite in the Smallsat class,\u201d Swissto12 CEO Emile de Rijk said via email, contrasting it with larger, government-backed systems in geostationary orbit such as Europe\u2019s EDRS and Japan\u2019s LUCAS.<\/p>\n
The spacecraft, known as SC-A, is slated for delivery in Japan\u2019s fiscal year 2028, which runs from April 2028 through March 2029.<\/p>\n
Small GEO gains traction<\/strong><\/p>\n The SC-A contract marks the sixth HummingSat order Swissto12 has announced, following deals with SES, Viasat and Astrum Mobile, all of which use radio-frequency payloads. The platform is scheduled to make its on-orbit debut in 2027 with SES Intelsat 45 mission.<\/p>\n Swissto12 is procuring optical communication terminals \u201cfrom an experienced equipment supplier\u201d for SC-A , which is intended as a pathfinder for a broader optical relay network.<\/p>\n \u201cThe SC-A mission will demonstrate that significant and market competitive optical data relay services can be deployed from GEO based on a SmallSat platform such as HummingSat,\u201d de Rijk added.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are plans to expand this to multiple satellites to achieve global coverage, which can be achieved with HummingSat.\u201d<\/p>\n Space Compass, a joint venture between Japan\u2019s flagship satellite operator Sky Perfect JSAT and telecoms giant NTT, aims to offer the relay service as a dual-use platform for government and commercial customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company has already announced a contract with Japan\u2019s Ministry of Defense<\/a> related to its optical communications plans.<\/p>\n Last year, Space Compass announced a feasibility study with Hellas Sat<\/a> to assess interoperability between its planned relay capabilities and the Greek operator\u2019s upcoming Hellas Sat 5 satellite, which is being designed with an optical payload.<\/p>\n De Rijk said demand remains strong for small GEO satellites in sovereign and commercial markets, particularly for regional and replacement missions, as operators seek lower-cost alternatives amid a shift toward multi-orbit and LEO systems.<\/p>\n U.S.-based Astranis is also racking up orders of similarly sized satellites<\/a>, while Finland\u2019s ReOrbit recently signed a deal<\/a> with asset-financing company SLI for two sub-ton GEO communications satellites.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Swissto12, the Switzerland-based small geostationary satellite specialist, has signed a contract to build the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[81135,18,19,17,30807,181444,133,32463,3977,451,181445,57448],"class_list":["post-399436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-data-relay","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-optical-communications","tag-satellite-conference","tag-science","tag-small-geo","tag-sn","tag-space","tag-space-compass","tag-swissto12"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116277660141918670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}