Astrocast 0101, ..., TBD

Astrocast 0101 [Astrocast SA]

The Astrocast satellites form Astrocast SA's constellation for global L-band machine-to-machine (M2M) services.

Astrocast is a network of Nanosatellites providing global L-band machine-to-machine (M2M) services. The satellites are orbiting in a low earth polar orbit. This allows the creation of a global network covering the entire globe, including the poles. Thanks to a dedicated frequency band, the constellation can scale without fear of noise generated by other devices. Astrocast estimates it can build, launch and operate a 64-cubesat constellation for less than $50 million to provide low-data-rate communications. The constellation will consist of eight operational satellites per orbital plane, and eight different orbital planes in sun-synchronous polar orbits.

After integration of the NanoLink terminal, the ground based assets can reliably and securely send any kind of sensor data to the constellation of nanosatellites that will acknowledge the reception. Astrocast enables transmission of 1KB/day from any region on the earth.

A geographically distributed network of ground stations collects the data gathered by the satellites. The data are then uploaded to a cloud storage for access by the customer.

• The first batch of five satellites (Astrocast 0101 to 0105) was launched in January 2021 on a rideshare Falcon-9 v1.2 (Block 5).
• Five more satellites (Astrocast 0201 to 0205) were launched in June 2021 again on a rideshare Falcon-9 v1.2 (Block 5).
• A third batch of four satellites (Astrocast 0301 to 0304) was launched in November 2022 as piggy-back payloads on an Indian PSLV-XL.
• The fourth batch (Astrocast 0401 to 0404) will be launched in January 2023 on a rideshare Falcon-9 v1.2 (Block 5).
• Ten more operational satellites will be launched later on a Vega multi-satellite launch. This launch was delayed from late 2020.