Satellogic is gearing up to launch its latest batch of satellites next month, potentially including the company’s first Merlin sat, which is designed to gather constant 1-m-resolution EO imagery.
Satellogic confirmed the launch of two of its NewSat Mark VI machines—equipped with intersatellite links—and one NewSat Mark V, which is intended to be sold and transferred to a customer while on-orbit, as part of the company’s Sovereign Space Systems program.
Satellogic had previously announced that its first Merlin satellite would launch in October, though the company did not confirm if it would join the three NewSats on the same launch next month.
Tip of the sword: The first Merlin is part of Satellogic’s shifting business model, which focuses less on selling one-off imagery, and more on offering customers the ability to periodically monitor terrestrial sites through the company’s Aleph Observer platform.
Satellogic’s satellites are always capturing images as they pass over the planet, meaning they can spot changes and notify customers when something of interest happens at one of the customers’ selected sites. Satellogic is improving this capability by launching next-gen sats equipped with optical intersatellite links and on-board processing to speed up the delivery of data.
This shift has driven an exponential increase in the number of sites customers can monitor. Once Merlin comes online, Satellogic expects that capability will compound, by encompassing the entire planet with a practically unlimited number of sites that can be monitored.
“It’s going to be amazing for the defense and intelligence industry, because suddenly you have complete awareness of the theater that you’re operating in, which is not something that you have today,” Satellogic CEO Emiliano Kargieman told Payload. “But I think it also will open up the door for us to start serving customers in industry.”
Dual users: The constant monitoring capability is initially intended to serve defense and intelligence customers—a realm in which Satellogic has lately seen a ton of interest.
Satellogic announced an expanded contract today within the Office of Naval Research’s Slingshot III program, which tasks Satellogic with conducting a series of on-orbit tests in 2027 and 2028 using six of the company’s Mark VI sats. The contract will validate Satellogic’s on-board data processing and automated filtering capabilities, and study whether the company can accelerate the DoD’s ability to track and monitor a range of sites around the globe.
Satellogic intends to use its next-gen satellites to ramp up its commercial customer base, capitalizing on the low-cost of its always-on satellite constellation in a bid to offer affordable paths for commercial users to use its imagery.
“[Merlin] allows us to offer a monitoring product for sites where the customer ends up paying less than what they were paying for five [or] six images a day, and now they’re getting 150 sites monitored continuously,” Kargieman said. “So it allows us to go with a really good pricing for customers, but also keep very healthy margins.”
Kargieman added that the company boasts an ~80% margin across the business.
What’s next: Satellogic has 18 satellites in orbit, and plans to add as many as eight Merlin satellites to the constellation by July 2028, according to Kargieman. But the company isn’t attempting to build and operate an ever-expanding fleet of sats.
Instead, Satellogic plans to maintain a constellation of around 18 sats, and double-down on its Space Systems program, in which they sell fully-operational, in-orbit sats to governments looking to immediately add a satellite to their sovereign network. The company first sold an in-orbit sat in April of this year to an undisclosed customer.
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Orbital compute startup Sophia Space and space asset leasing company SLI have set terms for a $300M asset-financing deal, the companies announced today.
Under the framework, SLI would fund construction of a 10-satellite edge computing constellation against build and launch milestones, take ownership upon in-orbit acceptance, and lease them to Sophia’s customers.
Both companies are betting that space is entering its infrastructure capital era. As a result, they’re relying on the same financing tools that built aviation and shipping.
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