Open Cosmos launched the first two satellites of its new broadband fleet yesterday aboard a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from Māhia, New Zealand.
The launch marks Open Cosmos’ entrance into the world of satcom, and comes about a week after the company secured a license from Liechtenstein to use its Ka-band frequency with the new constellation.
The mission: Open Cosmos COO Aleix Megías told Payload that the company established a connection with the sats about an hour after they deployed. The spacecraft will go through a rigorous test sequence—examining payload performance, network integration, and operational resilience—during the coming months. The results of these first flights will be used to validate the design of the constellation.
Through the new constellation, Open Cosmos aims to provide customers with better access to space-based data. Being able to transmit over the high-priority Ka-band frequency gives connected customers reliable, secure capacity to downlink their space-based data more frequently.
While Megías declined to share Open Cosmos’ deployment plan for the rest of the constellation, he confirmed that more launches to build out the constellation are expected this year. Open Cosmos is also hiring dozens of new employees to keep up with growing demand, he said.
Go your own way: The launch is a turning point for Open Cosmos. For the past decade, the company has been building sats for commercial and civil customers. It also developed sovereign constellations and testbeds for future technologies in IoT, 6G connectivity, and AI.
But Open Cosmos isn’t exactly pivoting strategies by striking out with its own constellation. Instead, the aim is to demonstrate more capabilities to keep up with the world’s growing demand for sovereign orbital infrastructure.
“This has been in the strategy of the company since the very beginning,” Megías told Payload. “What we are going to do with these two satellites is bring the frequencies into use, show that we can actually utilize them, [and] show again, that Open Cosmos can deliver reliably and very fast…and that we plan to continue doing this.”
What’s next: While competition in the satcom market is only increasing, Open Cosmos’ position in the European market gives it a unique advantage, according to Megías. With offices and factories in Portugal, Greece, Spain, and the UK, Open Cosmos can offer quick access to space for sovereign solutions at a time when European governments are trying to localize as much of their space capabilities as possible.
“We see a very, very strong need in Europe, and willingness to have an industrial partner that is a pan-European partner, like Open Cosmos—that can provide these [services] and also feed the entire supply chain in Europe,” Megías said.
