Tyvak International, a Terran Orbital Company, launched their sixth nanosatellite, Eutelsat ELO Alpha mission, aboard an Arianespace’s Vega VV18 from the Kourou Launch complex in French Guyana. ELO is a prototype for Eutelsat’s low earth orbit Internet of Things (IoT) constellation. The 6U satellite is used to assess the performance of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites in providing narrowband connectivity for objects. Eutelsat ELO Alpha mission also backhauls information from objects located in areas that are not served by terrestrial networks and offer redundancy on existing terrestrial network coverage.
Orbiting in a sun-synchronous orbit between 500 and 600 km in altitude, the satellite collects data from connected objects across the globe equipped with the same omnidirectional antennas already used by terrestrial IoT networks. Data is then transmitted daily to a ground station located on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.
Terran Orbital performs the mission operations for ELO Alpha from its Tyvak International location in Torino, Italy.
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Arianespace’s 18th Vega mission also deployed several small satellites using its innovative rideshare service SSMS (Small Spacecraft Mission Service). These auxiliary payloads included an observation microsatellite for the Norwegian space agency, Norsat-3, and four cubesats, for the operators Eutelsat, NanoAvionics/Aurora Insight and Spire. The SSMS rideshare service, developed with the support of the European space industry, was first deployed by Arianespace in September 2020. Funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), Arianespace’s SSMS service will soon be joined by the Multiple Launch Service (MLS), a similar offering that uses the Ariane 6 launch vehicle. With these two services, Arianespace can offer a wide range of affordable launch opportunities for small satellites and constellations.
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