A number of companies from Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia have joined forces to create a satellite constellation that will be able to monitor the Earth’s surface for civil and military purposes. They are currently preparing to attract investment for the implementation of the project.
New satellite constellation
A consortium of Ukrainian, Scandinavian, and Eastern European companies hopes to raise more than €100 million ($115 million) to create a constellation of more than 70 satellites that will provide intelligence data along Russia’s border.
The project is headed by the Ukrainian Aerospace Clusters’ Alliance and its director, Eugen Rokytsky. According to him, in the first stage of the project, he will focus on raising funds from private entrepreneurs.
Overall, the constellation is planned as a dual-use system. Its primary purpose is stated as civil. However, no one is hiding the fact that another goal of its creation is to reduce the dependence of Ukraine and Europe as a whole on the supply of American intelligence data, which is becoming increasingly unreliable.
Technical details
In general, satellite intelligence data has played an important role in ensuring Ukraine’s security since before the large-scale invasion. And with its launch, their role only grew. Immediately, there was talk of the risks and the need to find an alternative to American satellites.
For a long time, attempts were made to solve the problem through private companies, but it is clear that something more reliable is needed. And now there is a project that provides for observation in the optical range with a resolution of 20 cm and SAR satellites that will see through fog and trees.
At the same time, it is assumed that in order to accomplish all of the tasks set, the constellation should be quite large and consist of at least 70 devices. At first glance, this goal seems pretty ambitious, but it’s actually pretty reasonable.
A preliminary feasibility study conducted by the All-Ukrainian Alliance of Innovative Space Clusters concluded that Ukraine and its partners in the Northern and Eastern European region, including Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria, have the technological capabilities to implement such a project within the next five years.
Bulgarian company Endurosat and Lithuanian company NanoAvionics manufacture small satellite buses and have delivered more than 10 satellites each to their customers. In addition, the Czech company TRL Space is currently conducting a crowdfunding campaign to create a high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite for Ukraine — the first of a planned group of five satellites.
According to spacenews.com
